'
M THOMAS
GAINSBOROUGH
BY
LORD RONALD SUTHERLAND GOWER, F.S.A.
LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
1903
CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
PREFACE
AN art critic has said that no great painting can be
described, and that it is not in the province of
words to give an idea of colour. This, in a certain measure,
is true, but since works of the highest art — whether a
building such as the Parthenon, or the Taj Mahal, or the
Alhambra, or statues like the Venus of Milo and the
Olympian Hermes — may be brought before the mental
vision by words, why also may not such consummate
creations of the brush as Raffaele's School of Athens, or
Leonardo's Last Supper, or Michael Angelo's frescoes on
the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel ?
On a lower level words do not entirely fail to convey
the impression of a fine portrait or a landscape painting,
although the most elementary photographic reproduction
of such portrait or landscape will give a better idea than
pages written by a Ruskin or a Fromentin.
With the help of the illustrations, which are numerous,
I hope this little book will make Gainsborough's art
more familiar to those who may not have had an oppor-
tunity of seeing a collection of his works. I can only
advise those who have not studied his paintings in our
own National Gallery to do so. Let them pass a few
moments, at least, before that wonderful half-length
portrait of Mrs. Siddons, and when they have studied it
sufficiently let them turn to that other half-length portrait
of the Parish Clerk of Bradford-on-Avon, old Edward
Orpin. If portraits do not attract, let them look at the
same painter's landscapes in the Gallery ; at the Market
Cart, The Watering Place, or that picture of a forest called
vi PREFACE
Gainsborough's Forest, which out-Hobbemas Hobbema's
greatest efforts. What poetry there is in all these, what
truth to Nature. How full of light and fresh country air
are these views of Suffolk lanes and pastures, and the
woods with their summer foliage, and the great rolling
clouds above.
No one need go beyond the walls of our National
Gallery to study the Suffolk painter at his best Never
was an artist more endowed with a sense of the beauty of
Nature, both in things animate and in scenery: it would
be hard to say which he more excelled in painting.
Even in his lifetime Sir Joshua Reynolds gave it as his
opinion that Gainsborough was the greatest landscape
painter of his day. Time has endorsed this opinion. In
some respects Gainsborough was the most delightful
portrait painter also, not only of his day, but that the
world has ever had.
To His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge I am
indebted for his kind permission to reproduce his picture
of Anne Luttrell, Duchess of Cumberland, and I have
also to thank the following owners of sketches and pic-
tures by Gainsborough for their kindness in allowing me
to use their treasures as illustrations : the Duke of Port-
land, the Duke of Sutherland, the Duke of Rutland, the
Duke of Buccleuch, the Duke of Westminster, the Duke
of Newcastle, Earl Amherst, Earl Stanhope, Lady
Wantage, Earl Spencer, Lord Rothschild, the Earl of
Northbrook, the Earl of Carlisle, Lady Annaly, the Earl
of Leicester, Lord Tweedmouth, Miss Alice de Roth-
schild, the Rev. E. Gardiner, Mr. Lionel Phillips, Mr.
James Orrock, Mr. Arthur Kay, Mr. Henry Pfungst,
Mr. Alfred de Rothschild, Mr. A. Sanderson, and Mr. F.
Leyborne Popham.
CONTENTS
PAGE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . . . . ix
i. INTRODUCTORY . . . ... . i
II. SUDBURY . . . . . . .10
in. IPSWICH ... . . . . 23
iv. BATH . 37
v. LONDON . . . . ... 69
vi. THE ILLUSTRATIONS ... . .108
INDEX . . . . . . . . . 129
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH (Photogravure Plate}
(Frontispiece)
MRS. SIDDONS National Gallery 4
ALEXANDER, DUKE OF HAMILTON
Collection of Miss Alice de Rothschild 6
LANDSCAPE IN BLACK AND WHITE CHALK
Collection of Arthur Kay, Esq. 8
DRAWING IN CHALK AND WASH ON YELLOW PAPER
Collection of Arthur Kay, Esq. 8
PORTRAIT OF GAINSBOROUGH, FROM A DRAWING
Collection of Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower 10
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Collection of the Earl of Leicester 12
GAINSBOROUGH'S BIRTHPLACE, SUDBURY 1727, FROM THE
VIEW BY G. C. FlNDEN 14
GAINSBOROUGH'S BIRTHPLACE, SUDBURY, FROM A PHOTO-
GRAPH 14
GARDEN FRONT OF GAINSBOROUGH'S BIRTHPLACE, SUDBURY 16
JACK PEARTREE, FROM A SKETCH AFTER THE ORIGINAL LIFE-
SIZE OIL PAINTING Christ Church Museum, Ipswich 16
THE OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL, SUDBURY, 1700, FROM A PRINT 18
LADY EDEN Collection of Charles Wertheimer, Esq. 20
DRAWING FOR " THE SHRIMP GIRLS "
Collection of Arthur Kay, Esq. 22
M^s. MEARS Collection of Alfred de Rothschild, Esq. 24
NANCY PARSONS Collection of Charles Wertheimer, Esq. 26
MRS. GAINSBOROUGH 28
LANDSCAPE WITH SHEEP AND HORSES
Collection of Henry Pfungst, Esq. 30
ix
x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
LANDSCAPE Collection of Henry Pfungst, Esq. 30
GAINSBOROUGH'S TWO DAUGHTERS
Collection of the Rev. E. Gardiner 32
THE Two DAUGHTERS OF THE ARTIST
Collection of Charles Wertheimer, Esq. 32
H.R.H. THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND, FROM THE UNFINISHED
PORTRAIT
Collection of H.M. the King^ Windsor Castle 34
QUEEN CHARLOTTE, FROM THE ENGRAVING BY GAINS-
BOROUGH DUPONT OF THE PICTURE AT BUCKINGHAM
PALACE 36
LORD ARCHIBALD HAMILTON
Collection of Miss Alice de Rothschild 38
GAINSBOROUGH'S HOUSE IN BATH, 24, THE CIRCUS 40
GREAT CORNARD WOOD, FROM THE MEZZOTINT 42
MR. OZIER Collection of James Orrock, Esq. 44
DAVID GARRICK Town Hall, Stratford-on-Avon 46
DAVID GARRICK Christ Church, Oxford 46
GENERAL WOLFE Collection of James Orrock, Esq. 48
LORD FREDERICK CAMPBELL
Collection of the Duke of Argyll 50
LANDSCAPE Collection of Lionel Phillips^ Esq. 5 2
LANDSCAPE Formerly in the possession of
Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower 54
LANDSCAPE Collection of the Duke of Sutherland 56
THE HARVEST WAGGON Collection of Lord Tweedmouth 58
THE TWO Miss LINLEYS (MRS. SHERIDAN AND MRS.
TICKELL Dulwich Gallery 60
SAMUEL LINLEY, R.N. Dulwich Gallery 60
MRS. SHERIDAN Collection of Lord Rothschild 62
MRS. SHERIDAN Collection of Charles Wertheimer, Esq. 62
THE HONOURABLE GEORGIANA SPENCER, AFTERWARDS
DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE Collection of Earl Spencer 64
THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE, FROM THE OIL SKETCH IN
MONOCHROME IN THE POSSESSION OF LADY ANNALY 66
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi
PAGB
GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE, FROM THE LITHO-
GRAPH BY LORD RONALD SUTHERLAND GOWER 66
GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE
Collection of Earl Spencer 66
STUDY Collection of Henry Pfungst, Esq. 68
STUDY FOR A PORTRAIT GROUP
Collection of Henry Pfungst, Esq. 68
SKETCH Collection of Henry Pfungst, Esq. 68
SCHOMBERG HOUSE, GAINSBOROUGH'S RESIDENCE IN PALL
MALL 70
THE WOODCUTTERS Collection of Arthur Kay, Esq. 72
THE HON. MRS. GRAHAM
National Portrait Gallery of Scotland 74
THE HOUSEMAID, FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAWING
Collection of the Earl of Northbrook 74
THE HOUSEMAID, FROM THE LITHOGRAPH BY RICHARD
LANE, AFTER THE ORIGINAL DRAWING IN THE POSSES-
SION OF THE EARL OF NORTHBROOK 74
THE HOUSEMAID Castle Howard 76
PRINCESS MARIE, DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER (Photogravure
Plate] 76
MASTER BUTTALL (THE BLUE BOY)
Collection of the Duke of Westminster 78
THE DUCHESS OF CUMBERLAND
Collection of H.M. the King, Windsor Castle 80
ANNE LUTTRELL, DUCHESS OF CUMBERLAND
Collection of H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, K.G. 80
QUSEN CHARLOTTE
Collection of H.M. the King, Windsor Castle 82
GEORGE III. Collection of H.M. the King, Windsor Castle 82
GEORGE, PRINCE OF WALES
Collection of H.M. the King, Windsor Castle 82
GEORGE, PRINCE OF WALES
Collection of Miss Alice de Rothschild 82
CHARLES FREDERICK ABEL 84
xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
COTTAGE CHILDREN. FROM THE MEZZOTINT BY H.
BIRCHE 86
LANDSCAPE. FROM AN ETCHING ON PEWTER
Collection of the Rev. E. Gardiner 86
GIRL AND PIGS. FROM THE MEZZOTINT BY W. DICKENSON 88
THE WOODCUTTER'S HOME
Collection of the Duke of Rutland 90
COLONEL ST. LEGER Collection of Miss Alice de Rothschild 92
DRAWING FOR ONE OF GAINSBOROUGH'S TRANSPARENCIES
IN BLACK CHALK ON GRAY-WASHED PAPER
Collection of Arthur Kay, Esq. 94
THE ROYAL PRINCESSES (DAUGHTERS OF GEORGE III.)
Collection of H.M. the King 96
MRS. ROBINSON AS PERDITA Wallace Gallery 98
THE HON. WELBORE ELLIS (LORD MENDIP)
Christ Church^ Oxford 100
PORTRAIT STUDY OF A YOUNG GIRL, PROBABLY DAUGHTER
OF THE ARTIST Collection of the Rev. E. Gardiner 102
LADY MULGRAVE (Photogravure Plate) 102
LETTER FROM GAINSBOROUGH TO REYNOLDS. IN THE
POSSESSION OF THE COUNCIL OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY 104
MRS. MOODEY AND HER CHILDREN Dulwich Gallery 1 06
MRS. FITZHERBERT Collection of A. Sander son, Esq. 108
LORD LEICESTER Holkham Hall no
GIRL AT A WINDOW Collection of the Duke of Sutherland no
ROBERT, VISCOUNT BELGRAVE
Collection of the Duke of Westminster no
GRACE DALRYMPLE, MRS. ELLIOTT
Collection of the Duke of Portland 112
MUSIDORA BATHING HER FEET National Gallery 112
STUDY OF A DOG. IN COLOURED CHALK
Collection of Henry Pfungst, Esq. 112
MRS. LEYBORNE Collection of F. Ley borne Popham, Esq. 114.
HENRY, THIRD DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH
Collection of the Duke of Buccleuch 114
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii
PAGE
WILLIAM PITT Collection of Earl Amherst 114
SKETCH OF THE PICTURE OF " THE MORNING WALK " —
SQUIRE HALLETT AND HIS WIFE
Original picture in collection of Lord Rothschild
Sketch in collection of H. Pfungst, Esq. 114
ORPIN, PARISH CLERK OF BRADFORD, WILTS
National Gallery 116
GAINSBOROUGH'S NEPHEW
Collection of the Rev. E. Gardiner 116
MRS. FREER Collection of James Orrock, Esq. 116
SIR JOHN SKINNER (CHIEF BARON)
Christ Church^ Oxford 116
AN IDYLL Collection of Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower 118
AN IDYLL. FROM THE MEZZOTINT 118
LARGE DRAWING IN COLOURED CHALKS AND WASH
Collection of Arthur Kay, Esq. 1 18
CKALK DRAWING Collection of Arthur Kay -, Esq. 118
HENRIETTA, COUNTESS GROSVENOR
Collection of the Duke of Westminster 120
ANNA, COUNTESS OF LINCOLN
Collection of the Duke of Newcastle 120
PHILIP, FOURTH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
Collection of Earl Stanhope 120
MARIA, LADY EARDLEY, AND HER DAUGHTER, AFTER-
WARDS LADY SAYE AND SELE
Collection of Lady Wantage 120
THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF CUMBERLAND
Collection of H.M. the King, Buckingham Palace 122
HEN AND CHICKENS. FROM A SKETCH DONE IN ONE HOUR
Collection of the Rev. E. Gardiner 122
Miss SUKEY TREVELYAN
Collection of Sir G. O. Trevelyan 124
LADY SHEFFIELD Collection of Miss Alice de Rothschild 126
EARL FITZWILLIAM Fitzwilliam Library, Cambridge 126
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
T T is inevitable to compare Gainsborough with Reynolds,
J[ but the comparison is unprofitable, since, although
both painted the portraits of the same generation, they were
distinctly different in style and feeling. When compared
with the output of Reynolds, who for some years painted
over a hundred portraits a year, Gainsborough's total of
not many over three hundred seems small. But whilst
Reynolds had many pupils and assistants, Gainsborough
had no assistants, and only a very few pupils. At no
period of his life did Gainsborough emulate the industry
which enabled the President to create a world of por-
traits. Gainsborough also lacked Reynolds's confidence of
touch, his psychological grip and marvellous variety. Sir
Joshua's portraits of Lord Heathfield, of Laurence Sterne,
and of Mrs. Siddons as the Muse of Tragedy, are the
very greatest portraits any English painter has created ;
unapproachable in dignity, intellect and force. But in
delineating the grace and sweetness of womanhood
Gainsborough claims an equal place with his great rival,
and as a painter of landscape he stands on a far higher
level.
B
2 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
It is to Gainsborough's credit that he never attempted
the so-called " grand style " in painting as did Romney
with such doubtful success ; in that province Reynolds
holds the highest rank of the artists of his day. Gains-
borough in some respects was like a child ; and this gives
his character a certain attraction. He probably never
opened a book for the sake of study or information, I
doubt whether he ever read a play of Shakespeare's or a
dozen lines of Milton. When not at work he would pass
hours with his friends, playing some musical instrument
or listening to their performances. A man is judged by
his friends, and whilst Reynolds loved to be in the society
of Burke or Johnson, Gainsborough liked those better who
could play upon the fiddle or the flute ; to hear music
pleased him more than to hear great minds discuss great
subjects.
It has been truly said by the German art critic, Richard
Muther, that, " what with Reynolds was sought out and
understood, was felt by Gainsborough ; whence the former
is always good and correct, where Gainsborough is un-
fortunate and often faulty, but in his best pictures with a
charm to which those of the President of the Academy
never attained . . . but what distinguishes him from
Reynolds, and gives him a character of greater originality,
is just his naive independence of the ancients, to which
he was led by the difference in his method of study."
Yes, whereas Gainsborough had his study and painting-
room on the green lawns and by the sedgy streams of
Suffolk, and among the woods and valleys of Somerset,
Reynolds had his among the works of the great Italian
masters, and in the churches of the Netherlands. The
one was contented to paint the natural beauties of his
native land, the land he loved so well that he never cared
INTRODUCTORY 3
to leave it, not even to cross the Channel ; the other, after
visiting Italy in his early years, was for ever striving to
walk in the giant footsteps of that Titan in Art, Michael
Angelo, whose works were always in his mind and whose
name was for ever on his lips — whom he almost worshipped
as the greatest genius of all time. The only "old master"
(yet for ever young) whom Gainsborough thoroughly ap-
preciated, and the only one whose works he cared to copy
and to imitate in his own portraits, was Vandyck. Some
of that master's works he had seen in the great houses of
this country, then the only art galleries in England, and
it was whilst visiting Lord Pembroke at Wilton that he
made copies of some of the finest works by the great
Fleming that exist in this country. As to the great
masters of Italian painting, I doubt whether Gains-
borough thought it worth his while to see their works in
Italy, and his enthusiasm for Michael Angelo and the
School of theCarracci was probably as little as the admira-
tion of Reynolds and the others was intense. It will be
seen how little he cared for what he called "the long-
nosed Greeks." " If we were in a room and Sir Joshua
Reynolds walked in we should receive him with all defer-
ence; but if Gainsborough were to appear we would greet
him as an old friend, clasp his hand, and wish to embrace
him." Thus a devoted lover of art and a devoted admirer
of England's greatest painters describes his feelings to-
wards the two great painters.
There is but one other great painter who combined
landscape painting and portraiture with an equal amount
of success as did the subject of the following memoir.
But besides being the greatest of portraitists and land-
scape painters, Rembrandt, the highest genius among all
Northern artists, was also the greatest in his religious
4 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
and genre subjects, subjects which Gainsborough never
attempted.
Whether Gainsborough ever had an opportunity of
seeing one of Watteau's paintings is doubtful, but in some
respects he may be compared to that delightful artist.
Take that exquisite picture by him of the ladies walking
in the Park at St. James's, does it not recall the graceful
brilliancy of the author of Le Depart pour la Cythere;
or again the group of the Duke and Duchess of Cumber-
land, where the pair are sauntering in the chequered
shade of a stately garden. Here again Watteau's delicate
brushwork and diaphanous tone seem to have been in-
voked with an equal amount of grace and refinement; all
the joy of life is there, and all the glamour of the summer
sky above, and cool sylvan glades beneath, which give so
much value to the fetes champetres of the works of the
Valenciennes painter. But whilst Watteau created a
purely imaginary world, Gainsborough painted what he
saw, only gilding it with the gold of his genius. The
same may be said of Gainsborough's landscapes of Suffolk
and Wiltshire in which he has introduced a peasantry
whose beauty could never have existed — cottagers and
their children, grouped around their doors or seated in
their waggons quite as beautiful as his fair dames and
gallants who flutter in the Mall, or walk in palace gardens.
Here the magic of the painter's art has cast a spell over
the simple denizens of the soil. The rustic beauties, how-
ever, introduced into his earlier landscapes were his wife
and pretty daughters, whom he used to pose for the part
and in his later life most of the peasant lads were painted
from the handsome Jack Hill whom he met in one of
his rambles near Richmond.
But youth, however handsome, gained much by being
Hanfstdi, gl photo\
[National Gallery
MRS. SIUDONS
INTRODUCTORY 5
painted by Gainsborough, whose instinct for colour was
so true, as witness the gorgeous cerulean dress which
gave Master Buttall, the son of a London ironmonger,
immortality as The Blue Boy.
As a colourist Gainsborough can be placed next to
Vandyck, and in England he created a new school by
his art of making even a lady's petticoat a thing of
beauty, a field of colour as beautiful as one of golden
cowslips, or as gorgeous as one of scarlet poppies. He
could even throw a halo upon a ribbon or a scarf. Look
at Mrs. Siddons's dress in the National Gallery, or the
Blue Boy's costume at Grosvenor House, or at Mrs.
Graham's portrait in the National Gallery at Edinburgh.
You will find there is no exaggeration. The dresses are
part of a perfect scheme; only Vandyck, Rubens and
Gainsborough ever painted such textures in such a
manner, and with such a feeling for the beauty of colour
as colour.
Gainsborough claims also a supreme rank amongst
portrait painters for the characteristic distinction that he
bestowed upon many of his sitters. In the portraits, for
instance, of the lovely Mrs. Sheridan, first in that lovely
sketch of herself and her brother when children, now at
Knole, she has that pathetic expression which seems to
have grown upon her, for nothing can be sadder or more
beautiful than her look in the full-length seated portrait,
now at Lord Rothschild's, which the artist painted some
years later. In both pictures there is a sad detached ex-
pression in the eyes, an expression much intensified in
the second, as if she knew that her life was drawing near
its close. When one looks at this later portrait, one can
believe that such a face could hardly be transfigured by
any change, however heavenly that change might be, so
6 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
perfect is it in its almost superhuman beauty. It was
consistent with such a face as that of Eliza Sheridan
that she should pass away almost whilst singing Handel's
glorious " Waft her, Angels."
Some of Gainsborough's portraits of ladies have a
striking dignity, a particular distinction found in no other
artist. This is very marked in the portrait at Edinburgh
of Mrs. Graham, and reappears in a portrait of the same
lady masquerading as a housemaid. It is also seen
in the half-length of Mrs. Siddons, and in many of the
heads of handsome youths, especially in that of George
Canning, painted shortly after he left Eton, and in those
of the Duke of Hamilton and his brothers, now at Wad-
desdon: it is also very marked in the unfinished portrait
of the painter himself, of which there is an illustration in
this book. It is the head of a great gentleman without
any attempt at pose, with frank eyes looking straight
from the picture, eyes full of brilliancy. No one could
paint eyes with such success as Gainsborough ; they
appear to sparkle and to see. Yet when you examine
the pictures closely, you find that the effect has been
obtained by a few touches of the brush — but those touches
could only be given by one man.
Until Gainsborough's appearance, England possessed
but one landscape painter in Richard Wilson, and he
was little more than a clever imitator of the Italians,
and more particularly of Claude Lorraine, with but little
individuality. Although some of his landscapes are good,
he cannot claim a place amongst artists of originality.
Gainsborough, on the contrary, was not merely an ex-
cellent landscape painter, but one of the most original of
any time or country. His early work in this branch is
somewhat hard and formal, but after he left Ipswich for
Thomsc n photo] [Collection of Miss A lice Rothschild
ALEXANDER, DUKE OF HAMILTON
INTRODUCTORY 7
Bath he made immense progress, and worked as hard on
landscapes, and with greater zest, than he did on his por-
traits. The result of this labour we see in such pictures
as his forest view at Great Cornard in Suffolk; in his
Watering Place, in the National Gallery, and in his Cot-
tage Door^ at Grosvenor House, and in others of his land-
scapes in many a gallery and private collection, where
they hold their place among the finest works of any
school, be it Italian, Dutch or Flemish. Admirably has
his great brother artist, Constable, written on Gains-
borough's landscapes, " The calm of mid-day, the haze
of twilight, the dew and pearls of morning are what we
find in the pictures of this good, kindly, happy man. . . .
As we look at them the tears spring to our eyes, and we
know not whence they come. The solitary shepherd
with his flock, the peasant returning from the wood with
his bundle of faggots, the darksome lane or dell, the
sweet little cottage-girl at the spring with her pitcher,
were the things which he delighted to paint, and which
he painted with exquisite refinement, yet not refinement
beyond nature."
If we knew England only through Gainsborough's
pictures of its scenery, I think we should love it for its
beauty. His views of English scenery, both in oils and
chalk, give the same impression as if we were actually
looking upon it, before all the hideous works of steam
and electricity had come to spoil, blacken, overrun, ruin
and scarify what was once the loveliest and most peace-
ful of islands. And yet, and this but shows the inartistic
level of the period, when Gainsborough died, and his
widow sold his works, between fifty and sixty of these
landscapes were left hanging on the walls of the rooms
and passages of his house unsold. As a draughtsman, or
8 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
rather sketcher, Gainsborough has no rival. Although
there are naturally great inequalities among the many
hundred drawings in chalk, in pen, and other mediums,
and in water colours — for Gainsborough loved to try
every kind of vehicle when at work on his studies — some
of the drawings which he dashed off rapidly as he sat by
the side of his wife in Schomberg House are pure gems.
Some of these are reproduced in this book, and give
some idea of the beauty of the originals. They are all
full of out-door feeling, although most of them were
drawn in a London sitting-room. But Nature was always
about Gainsborough, and while sketching and listening
to the playing of some of his musical friends, his thoughts
would be back again among the Suffolk woods and
lanes.
A great number of these studies are in the British
Museum, but hundreds are buried in private collections,
from which, by the kindness of their owners, I have been
permitted to select those here reproduced. Some of them
are reminiscent of Rembrandt's landscapes, but where the
great Dutch master relied on the distribution of strong
lights and deep shadows for his effects, Gainsborough's are
all bright, and steeped in full daylight. He saw Nature,
bright with sunshine as was his own happy disposition,
with no storm clouds or angry skies, serene and clear.
Most of these studies are drawn on blue or drab-coloured
paper, on sheets of about ten inches long by seven inches
high, with black chalk, heightened by white ; some
have a little red chalk in them. With these three tones
Gainsborough would, in a few rapid strokes, draw a
coppice or a stream, a wooded hillside or a single tree,
a turn in a road dotted here and there with figures and
buildings ; a cottage or a church, a crumbling ruin, or
INTRODUCTORY 9
some cattle feeding in a meadow. He loved to reproduce
the effects of a fleecy sky, a breezy day or the calm of
sunset.
His figure sketches were as rapidly executed as his
landscapes. In these the British Museum is especially
rich, and among many delightful studies none surpass in
grace and charm those for the portrait of one of the
Duchesses of Devonshire, in a huge hat and with the
most graceful of draperies: she seems to glide over the
trim lawn at Chatsworth or at Chiswick.
Gainsborough certainly had shortcomings in his art.
What painter, even among the greatest, has not imper-
fections? These shortcomings, however, in Gainsborough
were only the faults of his qualities. He did not always
draw correctly, and his figures are sometimes out of
proportion, for like Sir Joshua and Romney, he never
studied anatomy and very seldom painted from the
nude. That his sitters' hands were sometimes too small,
and their arms too long, and that in some of his portraits
the work is scamped and unfinished all must admit. He
certainly lacked tone and precision in the treatment of
the hair of some of his sitters, and was often too hurried
in his backgrounds. But his defects are atoned for a
thousandfold by his excellences, and it is these that
give the finality to Ruskin's verdict: "Gainsborough is
an immortal painter . . . the greatest colourist since
Rubens."
CHAPTER II
SUDBURY
"Gainsborough is an immortal painter ... a great name his,
whether of the English or any other school, the greatest colourist
since Rubens."— RUSKIN.
" Reynolds was all will and intelligence, Gainsborough soul and
temperament."— R. MUTHER.
" We are all going to Heaven, and Vandyck is of the company."
—GAINSBOROUGH.
THE little that we know of the life of Thomas
Gainsborough is due principally to an ill-written
pamphlet of some sixty pages, published by Philip
Thicknesse — who was also the author — in 1788, the
year of the artist's death ; and to a short Life written by
George Williams Fulcher, and published by his son in
the middle of the last century. Allan Cunningham,
whose work on British artists is generally so useful,
gives Gainsborough one of the most meagre biographies
in the series. Although some elaborately illustrated lives
of Gainsborough have appeared during the last few years
they contain little beyond the facts already given by
Fulcher; Thicknesse's brief memoir, "written," he said,
"in one day," is little more than a literary curiosity,
although it has preserved some record of Gainsborough's
life.
10
{Collection of Lord Ronald Sutherland Cower
PORTRAIT OF GAINSBOROUGH
FROM A DRAWING
SUDBURY n
Nine years after the artist's death John Thomas Smith,
Keeper of the Prints in the British Museum, and the
author of an interesting life of Nollekens the sculptor,
had the idea of writing a life of Gainsborough. In order
to get some information from a Suffolk man he wrote to
John Constable, the great landscape painter, who was
born near Gainsborough's home, asking for any facts
that Constable could give him relating to the portrait-
painter's early life. But in a letter written to Smith in
1 797, the information given by Constable was so meagre
that the Keeper of the Prints seems to have abandoned
his idea of writing a Life. According to Fulcher, junior,
the son of the author of Gainsborough's Life, up to 1 829
" the curious might, indeed, have acquired a few facts
from obituary notices in magazines, from collections of
anecdotes, from the biographies of eminent men; but
previous to the publication of Allan Cunningham's "Lives
of Painters," Gainsborough's history was a blank to all
the world in general."
The first biographer of our artist, Fulcher, was born
in Gainsborough's native town of Sudbury and was
educated in the same picturesque old Grammar School.
He did not live to complete the life he had begun to
write of his gifted fellow-townsman, dying suddenly in
the summer of 1855. The Life was completed by his
son, who, in the preface acknowledges the assistance and
advice he had received from Charles R. Leslie, R.A.
This Life of Gainsborough by the Fulcher father and
son, although only a booklet which can be read through
in n. couple of hours, is the most complete account that
we possess of one of our greatest painters, and from it
all the material of his later biographies has been gleaned.
Sudbury, a quiet market town in East Suffolk was the
12 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
birthplace of Thomas Gainsborough. The little town is
situated amidst scenery not of striking beauty, in some-
what flat and uninteresting country, but it boasts of rich
meadows, gentle, well-wooded hills and tranquil valleys
in which glisten the clear waters of the River Stour, flow-
ing by banks bordered with willows. To those who can
appreciate the landscapes of Gainsborough and Constable
there is great charm in this part of East Anglia, and when
visiting Sudbury and East Bergholt they will be con-
stantly reminded of these artists.
"Suffolk," Gainsborough is reported to have said,
" made me an artist," and until the close of his busy life
he found the material for all his best landscape work in
the studies and sketches he made when a youth at Sud-
bury, and in later life at Ipswich.
Thomas Gainsborough was born early in the month of
May, 1727. His father, John Gainsborough, was a Dis-
senter, an Independent, in his religious views, and a
manufacturer of woollen goods, of which the lugubrious
department of making shrouds appears to have been his
chief business. He apparently migrated to Sudbury from
Coventry, taking his shrouds with him. His wife belonged
to the Church of England. Her maiden name was
Burroughs, and her brother, who was a clergyman, was
head of the Grammar School at Sudbury, in which his
nephew, Thomas Gainsborough, was educated. All that
we know regarding Gainsborough's mother is that she was
an admirable housewife and had a talent for flower paint-
ing, a talent which may have influenced her son Thomas's
early love of drawing. She lived long enough to witness
his early success, when he became the best-known portrait
painter in Bath, for she only died in 1769, surviving her
husband one and twenty years.
{Collection of the Earl of Leicester
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
(THE GIFT OF THE ARTIST TO LORD LEICESTER)
SUDBURY 13
The Gainsborough family was a large one, consisting
of five sons and four daughters. The eldest, John, grew
up to be what would now be called " a crank." He had
an inventive mind and much mechanical skill. One of his
inventions, some kind of flying machine, ended its career
by landing him in a ditch. Some were more successful,
one a cradle which rocked itself, and another a wheel
that revolved in a bucket of water. He also attempted
to discover an instrument for correcting the longi-
tude, spending all his money over these mechanical toys.
Another of the artist's elder brothers, Humphrey, be-
came a dissenting minister at Henley-on-Thames: he
too had a mechanical turn of mind. He invented sun-
dials, and was believed by his friends to have anticipated
Watt in the invention of the steam-engine. Accord-
ing to Fulcher, Humphrey Gainsborough was a friend
of Maria Edgeworth's father, who shared his love of
mechanics, and who wrote in his memoirs that he had
" never known a man of more inventive mind." Watt's
famous invention of condensing the steam in an engine
in a separate vessel was supposed by Humphrey Gains-
borough's friends to have owed its inception to him.
Humphrey used to show the engine that he had made at
Henley, and someone who saw it there is supposed to
have carried the intelligence of how it was worked to
Watt. In his memoir of Gainsborough Thicknesse says,
that after Humphrey Gainsborough's death his brother
Thomas gave him this model of the steam-engine, which
alone, he adds, " would have furnished a fortune to all the
Gainsboroughs and their descendants, had not that un-
suspicious good-hearted man let a cunning, designing
artist see it, who surreptitiously carried it off in his mind's
eye," This is a remarkable statement to have been written
i4 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
so far back as 1788, and gives Thicknesse's words a tone
of prophecy of the coming revolution that the discovery
of steam and the steam-engine were to work in the world
some fifty years after the death of Humphrey Gains-
borough in 1776. Fulcher alludes to a sundial made by
Humphrey which Thicknesse presented to the British
Museum after the death of its maker. This sundial Thick-
nesse writes, " could point the hours to a second, in any
part of the world." Besides sundials and steam-engines
Humphrey Gainsborough also invented a tide-mill, for
which he received a premium of fifty pounds from the
Society of Arts. Besides being an inventor and mechan-
ician of some distinction, Humphrey was also a ferventand
zealous minister. Altogether a remarkable individual this ;
who, had he not been so eclipsed by the fame of his artist
brother would probably have found a place in the annals
of the distinguished men of his time. Of Gainsborough's
two younger brothers, Matthias and Robert, the former
died when still a youth ; the latter went to Lancashire,
was married twice and had some children.
The painter's four sisters all lived to be married ; the
eldest, Mary, to a dissenting minister named Gibbon who
lived at Bath. Susanna became Mrs. Gardiner; Sarah
married Mr. Dupont and became the mother of Gains-
borough Dupont, the painter's assistant and almost rival ;
and the fourth, Elizabeth, married a Mr. Bird, of Sudbury.
Sarah Dupont's son was the only member of the painter's
family who showed any strong artistic feeling, and had
he lived he would have carried on the fame of his illus-
trious uncle; but he was fated to die in 1797, at the age
of thirty. Dupont followed his uncle's style and teaching
very closely. Many of the portraits alleged to be by
Gainsborough are now believed to be the work of his
U
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SUDBURY 15
nephew, who not only painted in the same style, but had
some of his uncle's mannerisms. He also executed some
excellent mezzotints after Gainsborough's portraits.
Gainsborough Dupont, to judge by the portrait said to
have been painted in an hour by his uncle, and now
belonging to Sir Edgar Vincent, was a singularly good-
looking youth, with refined features, lit up by a pair of
very brilliant eyes. Thicknesse had a profound admira-
tion for young Dupont, and writes of him, " I cannot lay
down my pen without mentioning Mr. Dupont, his [Gains-
borough's] surviving nephew and scholar, who has been
fostered under his wing from a child, to his dying day,
because I can venture to pronounce him a man of ex-
quisite genius, little inferior in the line of a painter to his
uncle, possessing an excellent heart, and a good under-
standing; and when his works are known they cannot
fail of being equally admired, and I hope and believe, if
his own diffidence and modesty does not prevent him, that
he will not remove from his late uncle's house, [this was
written, it should be remembered, a year after Gains-
borough's death] for I am sure he can support its former
credit, either as a landscape or portrait painter." Thick-
nesse then proceeds to describe a portrait painted by
Dupont of Gainsborough which, he says, " has all the ease,
all the spirit, and all the fire in it, which might be ex-
pected in the portrait of the first genius that either this,
or any other kingdom ever produced."
To judge by the little view of Gainsborough's birth-
place, engraved by Finden in Fulcher's Life of the
painter, not only the house in which he was born, but
the whole side of the street in which it stands has totally
changed in appearance. In the place of a picturesque
but very ramshackle house with heavy beams and a
1 6 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
high-pitched roof, we now see a flat, uninteresting, red-
brick-fronted building of two storeys, and were it not for
the commemorative tablet on the right-hand side of the
entrance door, stating that in this house Gainsborough
was born, no one who had expected to find the house
pictured by Finden could imagine that this was the
painter's birthplace. Entering the door and passing
through a narrow passage opening into a garden with an
orchard beyond, one finds that the back of the building
bears more impress of its original form than the part
fronting the street, being comparatively little changed
since the days when Gainsborough lived there and played
in its garden and orchard.
I am indebted to Mr. Kemp, the present owner of
Gainsborough's birthplace, for the photographic views
which he has allowed to be taken, both of the house and
of the orchard, in which is still pointed out the stump of
a pear-tree, traditionally said to be that connected with
one of the very few incidents known to us of the painter's
boyhood. The story goes that this orchard had been
repeatedly plundered of its fruit, and that one day young
Gainsborough seeing a rustic leaning his elbows on the
brick wall, made a sketch of the fellow, who was shortly
after arrested for pilfering the fruit, his identity being
made known by Tom Gainsborough's sketch. Some time
afterwards Gainsborough painted a life-size figure of this
yokel, who was dubbed Jack Peartree, in oils on wood,
and this is supposed to have been his earliest attempt in
that medium. It is still to be seen in all its crudity, but
with some of the painter's future excellences, in the fine
old building of Christchurch at Ipswich, now, thanks to
the generosity of Mr. Felix Cobbold, a possession of that
town for all time,
SUDBURY 17
This portrait of Jack is cut out in the wood to the
shape of his figure after the manner of the old Dutch
fire-screens one finds sometimes in country houses, and
it was through seeing this painted figure of Jack Peartree
that Thicknesse made the acquaintance of the painter.
One day Thicknesse, who was Lieutenant-Governor of
Landguard Fort near Ipswich, was taking a walk with
a friend when, he says, " I perceived a melancholy-faced
countryman, with his arms locked together, leaning over
the garden wall." Thicknesse pointed out this strange
figure to his companion, who, he adds, "was a very
ingenious man, and he with great gravity of face, said
the man had been there all day, that he pitied him,
believing that he was either mad or miserable. I then,"
continues Thicknesse, " stepped forward with an intention
to speak to the madman, and did not perceive till I was
close up, that it was a wooden man painted upon a
shaped board."
The Lieutenant-General then introduced himself to
the painter of Jack Peartree's life-like portrait, but this
introduction and the results to which it led, belong to
that portion of Gainsborough's life when he had left
Sudbury and had gone to Ipswich.
Fulcher certainly did not appreciate the charm of the
quaint old houses of Sudbury, for in his Life of Gains-
borough, he calls them, " dilapidated and antique, encum-
bering and disfiguring the streets of his native town."
One can but regret the vandalism of the early part of
the last century and even later, when most of these old
houses so full of character and irreplaceable charms
were either destroyed or refaced by hideous frontages.
Amongst these were Gainsborough's home and the old
Grammar School in which he was taught by his maternal
1 8 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
uncle. The former has been utterly spoilt; the latter has
been torn down. Gainsborough's birthplace had once
been an inn, known as " The Black Horse," and if the
view of it in Fulcher's Life is faithful, it was a building
Prout would have delighted to draw. In 1835 a local
bye-law was passed by the Corporation in which was a
clause requiring that all houses, from that date, were to
"be made to rise perpendicular from the foundation
thereof"; and it was after this enactment that Gains-
borough's house was transformed into its present ugli-
ness. Fortunately a few of the quaint sixteenth-century
timbered houses are still to be seen in Sudbury. Of these
some of the most curious are in Stour Street, not far from
Gainsborough's home, and one, which is known as Old
Salters' Hall, is a perfect specimen of an Elizabethan, or
perhaps even earlier building, with its grotesque wooden
carvings and barge boards, and its deep bay windows,
under one of which there is a curious relief carved in the
dark-coloured oak.
The present owner of Gainsborough's birthplace told
me that he possesses papers showing that the house is
undoubtedly that owned by the artist's father; and
oddly enough his occupation is analogous to that of John
Gainsborough, for although he does not deal in " says "
and " crosses " — the technical terms for yarn differing in
quality from that spun from combed wool — he deals in
the finer province of silks. On one side of Mr. Kemp's
orchard is a large factory in which a number of hands
are employed in the making of silk, thus carrying on a
branch of trade which was brought to Sudbury in the
days of the third Edward, who invited the Flemish
weavers over to Suffolk in order that they should teach
their industry to the English. Gainsborough's father,
SUDBURY 19
according to tradition, was rather an old beau ; he wore
his hair carefully dressed and powdered, and was remark-
able for the excessive whiteness of his teeth. When in
full dress he wore a sword, in the use of which he was an
adept, being able to fence equally well with either the
left hand or the right. His business frequently took him
to Holland and to France. He was liberal to his work-
people, refusing to take what was called " toll " of their
earnings, which toll amounted to nearly one-third of
their weekly wages.
Sudbury's old Grammar School must have been a
quaint and picturesque house, judging from the sketch
of it, which, thanks to the Rev. W. G. Normandale, the
head of the present Grammar School, I am able to
reproduce in this book. The old school-house was
demolished half a century ago, and in its place was
erected one of those florid, toy-box buildings ; no doubt
a far better school than the old one, but utterly without
character.
Gainsborough was in his ninth year when he began
lessons under his uncle, the Rev. Humphrey Burroughs,
in the old schoolroom. According to Allan Cunningham
he was already at that early age remarkable for his clever
sketches, and when twelve years old was already " a con-
firmed painter," whatever that term may imply. During
these early years Tom filled his own and his fellow-
pupils' books with his pencillings, and "whilst," writes
Fulcher, " he was engaged in sketching some well-known
landscape or laughter-loving face, they busied themselves
in preparing his arithmetical exercises, and extracted the
cube roots of the vulgar fractions with an accuracy which
completely imposed on his worthy relative, leaving young
Gainsborough at liberty to pursue his ruling passion."
20 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
On one occasion when wanting a holiday he wrote on
a slip of paper, " Give Tom a holiday " ; the handwriting
was so exact an imitation of his father's, that the school-
master never doubted who had written the request. Tom
therefore had his wish and his holiday, which he spent
sketching in the woods. On his return, however, the trick
was discovered, and his father exclaimed, " Tom will one
day be hanged," which he was, often, but not in the
manner his father predicted. When the elder Gains-
boroilgh, however, saw the result of this stolen outing,
he not only forgave the forger, but, going to the other
extreme, prophesied that his son would one day astonish
the world.
When fourteen Gainsborough left his uncle's school.
His wonderful facility in sketching everything he came
across, made his parents feel that such a talent should
not be allowed to lie fallow in their small world. Thick-
nesse in his memoir says that there was "not a pic-
turesque clump of trees, not even a single tree of any
beauty, no, nor hedgerow, stem, or post," in and around
Sudbury which the boy did not either treasure in his
memory or draw. This facility caused his parents and
his uncle to decide that he should take up art as a pro-
fession. Accordingly he was sent to London and placed
under the tuition of an engraver, whose name has not
been recorded
Whilst in London Gainsborough made the acquaint-
ance of the French artist Gravelot, who was an excellent
engraver and admirable draughtsman. It was owing to
his good offices that the boy obtained admission to the
painting academy in St. Martin's Lane, where he became
a pupil of Hayman, a roystering dissipated artist, who at
that time, when art in England was only kept alive by
[Collection of Charles Wertheimer, Esq.
LADY EDEN
SUDBURY 21
Hogarth in figure painting and Wilson in landscape, was
considered a fine painter of historical and Shakespeare
subjects. Although a miserable dauber, Hayman was one
of the first elected members of the Royal Academy, and
when he died was its librarian, although he had not the
least merit for either post. He loved the bottle, and
young Gainsborough appears to have been none the
better for his companionship with him, as he himself
confessed later in a letter to a friend. He seems to have
succumbed also to the temptations that surround a youth
in London. And when he was at the St. Martin's Lane
Academy of Art, Hayman apparently delighted in taking
him upon his own rounds of dissipation. "They fre-
quented the bagnios and taverns about Covent Garden,
the prize-rings and gambling saloons about Soho," and
Fulcher, touching upon this period of the artist's life
says, " Whatever was questionable in his after conduct,
must in a great measure be attributed to his early re-
moval from home influence and to Hayman's example."
Fortunately Gainsborough's nature was too good and
sound for him to be more than smirched by these early
years in London amongst artistic ne'er-do-wells and ques-
tionable characters. In a letter written long afterwards
to the actor Henderson, a young friend who was begin-
ning his career in the metropolis, Gainsborough gave
him this advice: "Don't run about London streets
fancying you are catching strokes of nature at the hazard
of your constitution. It was my first school, and deeply
read in petticoats I am, therefore you may allow me to
caution you."
Whilst Gainsborough attended the drawing and paint-
ing classes at St. Martin's Academy and dissipated with
Hayman at night, English art was falling to such a low
22 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
degree that the painter Barry spoke of it as " disgrace-
ful," Fuseli as "contemptible," and John Constable as
" degraded," although it was the time when Hogarth
was at work on his immortal series of paintings, the
Marriage a la Mode and The Rakers Progress.
After three years' study at St. Martin's Academy,
Gainsborough hired a room in Hatton Garden, where he
began to paint landscapes and small-sized portraits, for
the latter of which he was glad to receive from three to
five guineas. He also modelled figures of horses and
dogs in clay. But this attempt to start his career in
London only lasted a short time, for at the end of the
year we find him back at Sudbury.
.
CHAPTER III
IPSWICH
^AINSBOROUGH was now eighteen: he is de-
VJJ1 scribed as being uncommonly good-looking, with
refined features and singularly brilliant eyes. His pleasant
manners charmed everyone he met, and he possessed,
what no education can give, natural refinement and
courtesy.
On his return to Sudbury he devoted the whole of his
time to landscape painting, scouring the countryside in
search of picturesque spots, and making scores of out-
of-door studies which he afterwards elaborated on canvas.
Fulcher says that he used to work at this painting from
nature from dawn until nightfall, " taking lessons from
the sunset clouds floating in changeful beauty." Fulcher
bought one of the landscapes painted at this time. It
was a view taken from the young artist's house, and de-
scribed as " a pleasant performance." According to Allan
Cunningham it was during one of Gainsborough's sketch-
ing excursions in the woods near Sudbury that he made
the acquaintance of his future wife, whilst busily drawing
a group of trees under which some sheep were browsing.
The girl, who was pretty, was called Margaret Burr, and
was the sister of one of the hands employed in the work-
shop of the artist's father. There was a mystery attach-
23
24 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
ing to her birth, for she received an annuity of £200 a
year, said by some to be given by the Duke of Bedford,
and by others by one of the exiled Stuart princes. Allan
Cunningham says that " Mrs. Gainsborough was said to
be the daughter of one of our exiled princes ; nor was
she, when a wife and mother, desirous of having this
circumstance forgotten. On one occasion of household
festivity, when her husband was high in fame, she vindi-
cated some little ostentation in her dress by whispering
to her niece, now Mrs. Lane, ' I have some right to this
for you know, my love, lama prince's daughter/ "
Margaret Burr's annuity, from whatever source derived,
enabled the young couple to marry, and an extremely
young couple they were, the husband being only nineteen
and the wife a year younger. And the union, so early
entered upon, continued throughout their lives a happy
and a prosperous one.
After their marriage Gainsborough and his wife re-
mained at Sudbury for six months, migrating thence to
Ipswich, where they took a small house in Brook Street,
for which they paid the not exorbitant sum of six pounds a
year. The young artist speedily discovering that however
attractive he himself might find the painting of land-
scapes, they did not provide a source of income, thought
that in the capital of his county he would be likely to
find more occupation as a portrait painter. But at the
outset he received neither encouragement nor sitters.
And a story of this period, related by Fulcher, scarcely
redounds to the sagacity of some of the gentry at Ipswich.
A wealthy squire hearing that one Gainsborough had
come to the town, and that he was a painter, sent for him.
On arriving at the squire's house Gainsborough naturally
expected that he would be asked to paint the portrait of
Colls bhoto}
[Collection of Alfred de Rothschild, Esq.
MRS. MEARS
IPSWICH 25
the worthy gentleman or of some member of his family,
or perhaps a view of the house, the gardens, or the park.
Judge of his disgust, when having been led to the farm-
steading the squire told him that he wished him to
repaint the palings !
Fifty years ago there were many of Gainsborough's
early works to be met with in and around Ipswich, and
Fulcher mentions a Mrs. Edgar who had quite a little
collection of his water-colour views. On my first visit
to Ipswich, in the winter of 1902, I could only discover
the portrait of Jack Peartree in the Museum of Christ-
church, but on returning to the town later, having heard
that some of the artist's paintings done at the begin-
ning of his career were to be seen at Mr. John Cobbold's
house of Holy Wells, I was more than rewarded for my
journey,
Whilst sketching near Freston Tower, on the banks of
the River Orwell, close to Ipswich, Gainsborough made
an acquaintance that ripened into a friendship which was
one of the happiest circumstances in his fortunate life.
This was with Joshua Kirby, a painter of some talent,
who was a native of Parham and was thus a fellow-
county man of Gainsborough's. Born in 1716, he had at
the age of two and twenty become painter to a coach
and house painter at Ipswich, and but for his meeting
with Gainsborough might have continued in his very
humble following of art. But the younger man's example
and instruction fired Kirby to attempt landscape painting,
with such success that in 1748 he published a series of
etchings of his native county with descriptive letterpress,
a work that attracted some attention to him. He then
went to London and studied as Gainsborough had done,
at the Academy in St. Martin's Lane, and ultimately sue-
26 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
ceeded in being appointed drawing master to George III.,
then Prince of Wales ; and when his royal pupil succeeded
to the throne he was made Clerk of the Works at Kew
Palace. Kirby made many views of the neighbourhood
about Richmond and Kew, and dying at the latter place
in 1774 was buried in its churchyard. His daughter Sara
was destined to become known to thousands through her
writings, few authors of her time being more popular
among young folk than the worthy Sara Trimmer. She
is one of the small number of authoresses whose portraits
figure in the National Portrait Gallery, and she is now
better remembered as one of the friends of Dr. Johnson
and his circle than as the writer of excellent but some-
what jejune works on sacred subjects and on education.
A close friendship sprang up between the Kirbys and the
Gainsboroughs, and when the former went from Ipswich
to London in 1753 they left their son William, a clever lad
who had inherited his father's artistic tastes, in Gains-
borough's charge as his pupil. In a letter written by
Sara Kirby to her brother she advises him to study
Gainsborough's " gentleness of manner." " Having," she
writes, " so good an example to copy after, I imagine you
improve very much in politeness."
Later on young Kirby, through George II I. 's kindness,
was sent to study in Italy, but he died soon after his
return. His father shortly followed him to the grave,
leaving Gainsborough the poorer by the loss of one of
his most devoted and attached friends. When his friend
was laid to rest in the peaceful old churchyard at Kew,
Gainsborough expressed a wish that when his turn came
he might be buried by Kirby's side: his wish was carried
out.
The years that Gainsborough passed at Ipswich were
{Collection of Charles Wertheimer, Esq.
NANCY PARSONS
IPSWICH 27
probably the happiest of his happy life. He had no rival
in portrait painting in the town, and no Royal Academy
with which to quarrel ; he was the life and joy of the
pleasantest people in the place, universally popular and
adored by his cronies. He was looked-up to by the gentry
of the county and neighbourhood, and, above all, his
home was a happy one, and his domestic life unclouded.
There is a pretty little tale told of his home life which
bears repeating. Whenever there had been a little mis-
understanding between Gainsborough and his wife, the
husband, who had rather a quick temper but who speedily
repeated of having given way to it, would write a little
note of contrition, asking for forgiveness, signing it with
the name of his favourite dog " Fox," and addressing
it to his wife's pet spaniel " Tristram." Then Margaret
Gainsborough would send an answer to her husband's
note, addressed to her " own dear Fox," to say that he
was always loving and good, and that she was a naughty
little woman " to worry you," she wrote once, " as I too
often do, so we will kiss and say no more about it. Your
own affectionate Tris." Were all domestic squabbles so
pleasantly arranged and smoothed over as these between
" Fox " and " Tris " what a much happier world this
might be.
Among the very few portraits which can be identified
as having been painted by Gainsborough whilst living at
Ipswich are some ovals, a form he was fond of using all
through his life, one of them being of the Hingeston
family, between whom and Gainsborough there existed
a great friendship, which was maintained until the end
of their lives. This picture was in the exhibition of the
artist's works at the Grosvenor Gallery in the winter of
1885, and portrays the Rev. James, his wife and his
28 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
son, John Hingeston, M.D. Gainsborough painted Mrs.
Hingeston twice, in middle life and again in her old age.
The latter portrait was also shown at the Grosvenor
Gallery, and the actual shawl worn by her when sitting
to Gainsborough was exhibited by the side of it.
During the Ipswich period he also painted small por-
trait groups, and amongst these were two into which he
introduced his own portrait and that of his wife, seated
on a knoll in a park-like landscape. One finds in this, as
well as in others of the somewhat rare portraits of Mrs.
Gainsborough, few traces of the beauty with which she
was credited by her contemporaries. If, as is possible,
some of the rustic women introduced by her husband
into some of his landscapes, were taken from her, then
her beauty is unmistakable, but in her best portraits,
although rather distinguished looking she is by no means
beautiful. In another group in which Gainsborough
painted himself and his wife, he has also introduced the
figure of his little girl, with a dog, painted as only Gains-
borough could paint the most lovable of quadrupeds. The
dog is drinking in a pool ; Gainsborough wears a three-
cornered hat. About the year 1750 he painted his own
portrait with this three-cornered hat cocked rakishly on
one side of his wig, for we know that even at that early
age our painter affected that headgear.
Besides these portraits of the Hingestons,of Southwold,
Gainsborough also painted many pictures for his friend
Mr. Kilderbee, of Ipswich, who at one time was the
fortunate owner of one of the painter's most perfect works,
that view of the Mall at St. James's, with a group of ladies
in the foreground, a picture which ranks in charm and
brilliancy with Watteau's famous Le Depart poiir la
Cythere^ and which has been compared, not unhappily, to
Graves bhoto\
[Owner unknoivn
MRS. GAINSBOROUGH
IPSWICH 29
the flutter of a lady's fan. Gainsborough also had an ex-
cellent patron in a Mr. Edgar, a Colchester lawyer, who
commissioned him to paint several pictures.
Gainsborough's letters are few, and unfortunately those
that have come down to us are disappointing ; for although
racy — somewhat too much so for our sensitive feelings
nowadays — they contain little relating to his work or
his method of painting. But the following, written to this
same Mr. Edgar, and dated Ipswich, March I3th, 1758, is
worth copying.
"Sir, I am favour'd with your obliging letter, and
return you many thanks for your kind intention; I
thought I should have been at Colchester by this time,
as I promised my sister I would at the first opportunity,
but business comes in, and being chiefly in the Face
way, I'm afraid to put people off when they are in the
mind to sit. You please me much by saying that no
other fault is found in your picture than the roughness
of the surface, for that part being of use in giving force
to the effect at a proper distance, and what a judge of
painting knows an original from a copy by; in short, be-
ing the touch of the pencil, which is harder to preserve
than smoothness. I am much better pleased that they
should spy out things of that kind, than to see an eye
half an inch out of its place, or a nose out of drawing
when viewed at a proper distance. I don't think it would
be more ridiculous for a person to put his nose close to
the canvas and say the colour smelt offensive, than to say
how rough the paint lies; for one is just as material as
the other with regard to hurting the effect and drawing
of a picture. Sir Godfrey Kneller used to tell them that
pictures were not made to smell of; and what made his
pictures more valuable with the connoisseurs was his
3o THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
pencil, or touch. I hope, Sir, you'll pardon this disserta-
tion upon pencil and touch, for if I gain no better point
than to make you and Mr. Clubb laugh when you next
meet at the sign of the * Tankard ' I shall be very well
contented. I'm sure I could not paint his picture for
laughing, he gave such a description of eating and drink-
ing at that place. I little thought you were a lawyer when
I said one in ten were not worth hanging. I told Clubb
of that, and he seemed to think I was lucky that I did
not say one in a hundred. It's too late to ask your par-
don now, but really, Sir, I never saw one of your profes-
sion look so honest in my life, and that 's the reason why
I concluded you were in the wool trade. Sir Jasper Wood
was so kind as to set me right, otherwise perhaps I should
have made more blunders."
Although as yet Gainsborough only painted bust and
small full-length portraits, and did not attempt full-length
size portraits, or any of the large size landscapes with
which he was so successful in later life, his style was
formed at Ipswich, a style entirely his own, at once
vigorous, original and full of character. No painter before
him had attempted to portray the surroundings of rural
life in England, and Gainsborough from the time that he
sketched at the Sudbury Grammar School never ceased
to reproduce the scenery of his beloved Suffolk.
Ruskin has given a beautiful description of the happi-
ness of the outdoor life of a landscape painter: they are
his own experiences. " Now," he writes, " consider what
a landscape painter's life used to be, in ordinary spring
weather of old times. You put your lunch in your pocket,
and set out, any fine morning, sure that, unless by a mis-
chance which needn't be calculated on, the forenoon, and
the evening, would be fair too. You chose two subjects,
IPSWICH 31
handily near each other, one for a.m , the other for p.m. ;
you sat down on the grass where you liked, worked for
three or four hours serenely, with the blue shining through
the stems of the trees like painted glass, and not a leaf
stirring; the grasshopper singing, flies sometimes a little
troublesome, ants also, it might be. Then you ate your
lunch — lounged a little after it — perhaps fell asleep in the
shade, woke in a dream of whatever you liked best to
dream of, — set to work on the afternoon sketch — did as
much as you could before the glow of the sunset began
to make everything beautiful beyond painting: you medi-
tated awhile over that impossible, put up your paints and
book, and walked home, proud of your day's work and
peaceful of its future, to supper." " That was in the years
between 1830 and 1870," adds the Professor, "before the
deterioration of climate " which he describes in one of his
lectures had set in, and which according to him marred
all outdoor work in England for landscape painters. But
if the weather was so much better half a century or more
ago there is all the more reason for believing that per-
petual summer gilded the sunny fields of Suffolk in the
middle years of the eighteenth century when young
Gainsborough painted their stunted pollards and weep-
ing willows by the side of the rapid Stour, and the tran-
quil Orwell, with their boats and seabound barges; or the
stately parks with their great clumps of immemorial oaks
and noble elms; or the country lanes dotted with the
rustic homes of the frugal peasantry, with children cluster-
ing in the doorways or about the heavy waggon-wheels,
groups of little folk which the artist's genius transfigured
into beings as beautiful as Luini's angels, worthy of
attendance at Heaven's gate.
Gainsborough gave poetry to the humblest of rustic
32 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
scenes, and threw the glamour of his art upon such simple
themes as a waggon-load of peasants returning from the
hayfield on a summer's evening, or a little milkmaid
crossing a meadow, or seated, watching the farmer's pigs
drinking out of a trough ; or a lad asleep by the side of
a stile; or a couple of swains pointing out an epitaph in
a ruined churchyard — such simple scenes became as beau-
tiful under his touch as those lines of Gray in which he
tells of " the simple annals of the poor."
There is a letter from Mr. Hingeston, the son of the
clergyman, written to a friend, which gives us more idea
of the young artist and his Ipswich surroundings than
anything else that has come down to us. " I remember
Gainsborough well," he writes, " he was a great friend of
my father's; indeed his affable and agreeable manners
endeared him to all with whom his profession brought
him in contact, either at the cottage or the castle ; there
was that peculiar bearing which could not fail to leave a
pleasing impression. Many houses in Suffolk, as well as
in the neighbouring county, were always open to him,
and their owners thought it an honour to entertain him,
I have seen the aged features of the peasantry lit up with
a grateful recollection of his many acts of kindness and
benevolence. My father's residence bears testimony alike
to his skill as a painter and his kindness as a man ; for
the panels of several of the rooms are adorned with the
productions of his genius; one is a picture of Gains-
borough's two daughters, when young; they were en-
gaged in chasing a butterfly; the arrangement of the
figures, and the landscape introduced into the back-
ground, are of the most charming description ; there are
several other drawings, all in good preservation, and de-
lineated in his happiest manner."
[Collection of the Rev, E. Gardiner
GAINSBOROUGH'S TWO DAUGHTERS
(UNFINISHED)
[Collection of Charles Wertheimer, Esq.
THE TWO DAUGHTERS OF THE ARTIST
IPSWICH 33
The picture here referred to of Gainsborough's daugh-
ters is now in the National Gallery, to which it was be-
queathed in 1900 by Mr. H. Vaughan. The two little girls,
Margaret and Mary, are painted standing hand in hand
under some trees. Mary is trying to catch a butterfly.
It is very sketchy in treatment, and cannot be said, any
more than the portraits of his wife, to give much impres-
sion of the possession of good looks: neither does any
beauty appear in another slight portrait of his two girls,
of which there is a reproduction in this book. The two
girls were both born at Ipswich, and in later life both
showed symptoms of insanity. The second, Mary, mar-
ried, but not happily. Even in the time of his death
Gainsborough was fortunate, dying before the insanity
in his children had become apparent, thus being spared
what would have been a terrible and overwhelming sorrow
to a man of his strong and affectionate nature.
After painting, Gainsborough's greatest interest was
for music. There still exists at Ipswich, by the side of
that beautiful Tudor house in the Butter Market, " The
Ancient House," formerly in possession of the Sparrow
family, and now a bookseller's shop and circulating library
— an inn, in the parlour of which Gainsborough is said,
by local tradition, to have spent many a jovial evening
with some of his boon companions. " Pretty boys they
all were in this day," is the judgement passed by a con-
temporary on the frequenters of the musical club which
met at this old inn. John Constable avers that Gains-
borough was " the butt of the company. His wig was to
them a fund of amusement," as it was often snatched
from off his head and thrown about the room; a state-
ment which goes to show that when living at Ipswich
Gainsborough did not stand over-much upon his dignity,
D
34 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
but for all that he must have been a most amiable, good-
natured individual.
At this period the acquaintance — for it could never be
called a friendship — to which reference has been already
made, sprang up between Gainsborough and that very
singular person, Philip Thicknesse, Lieutenant-Governor
of the neighbouring Landguard Fort on the coast oppo-
site Harwich and not far distant from Ipswich. Land-
guard Fort stands on a small promontory jutting out
into the joint estuaries of the Stour and Orwell. The
original fort dated from the middle of the sixteenth
century, but it was rebuilt in 1718, and has been very
much altered since that date — a circular fort of concrete
armed with thirty eight-ton guns and other artillery in
casemated batteries, which sweep the harbour ; it is as
strictly forbidden to visitors as the seraglio of the Sultan.
Philip Thicknesse, who was the son of a clergyman and
had obtained the governorship of the fort by purchase,
appears, to judge by his own writings, to have belonged to
that unfortunately common genus, the military snob.
Arrogant, selfish, self-assertive, patronizing and irritable,
he was a collection in one man of failings, one of which
was sufficient to damn a regiment let alone one governor
of a military post. Thicknesse loved to parade his con-
nection with anyone who had a title, and was always
ready to quarrel or to create a scandal in order that his
name should be talked about.
The manner in which the acquaintance between the
painter and this Governor of Landguard Fort commenced
has already been described and how the general was com-
pletely deceived by Gainsborough's presentment of Jack
Peartree stuck on a brick wall. The following is Thick-
nesse's account of his first visit to Gainsborough : " Mr.
\CollectionofH.M. the King, Windsor Castle
H.R.H. THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND
FROM THE UNFINISHED PORTRAIT
IPSWICH 35
Gainsborough received me in his painting-room, in which
stood several portraits truly drawn, perfectly like, but
stiffly painted, and worse coloured; among which was
the late Admiral Vernon ; for it was not many years after
he had taken Porto Bello with six ships only, but when I
turned my eyes to his little landscapes and drawings, I
was charmed ; these were works of fancy and gave him
infinite delight. Madam Nature and not man, was then
his only study, and he seemed intimately acquainted
with that beautiful old lady. Soon after this the late
King passed by the garrisons under my command, and
as I wanted a subject to employ Mr. Gainsborough's
pencil in the landscape way, I desired him to come and
eat a dinner with me, and to take down in his pocket-
book the particulars of the fort, the adjacent hills, and
the distant view of Harwich, in order to form a land-
scape of the yachts passing the garrison under the salute
of the guns, of the size of a panel over my chimney-
piece; he accordingly came, and in a short time after
brought the picture."
For this view of the fort the Governor gave Gains-
borough fifteen guineas, and with them a fiddle, " for I
found," he writes, " that he had as much taste for music
as he had for painting, though he had then never touched
a musical instrument."
Thicknesse caused this view of Landguard Fort to be
engraved in London by Major, and the engraving is still
to be met with, but the painting perished through being
placed against a damp wall. To judge from the print it
must have been a very pleasing work. The foreground
contains some figures, and some stray sheep and a donkey,
all introduced in the artist's delightful manner, and be-
yond, a wind-driven sea breaking on the beach. The
36 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
royal flotilla is being saluted by the old wooden war-
ships, and above, great rolling clouds give a dignity to
the whole. This is one of Gainsborough's very rare sea-
scapes. I know but of two others, one of which is at
Grosvenor House ; the other was at the Grosvenor Gallery
in 1885, and belonged to Mrs. Clarke Kennedy.
Thicknesse boasts that it was owing to the celebrity
attained for Gainsborough by Major's engraving, and the
praise which he himself deigned to bestow on his protege,
that induced the painter to leave Ipswich and settle at
Bath, where Thicknesse says he told him to " try his
talents at portrait painting in that fluctuating city."
Governor Thicknesse owned a house in that "fluctuat-
ing" place where he passed the Bath season. As he
never troubles to give dates in his " Memoir," it is un-
certain whether the Gainsboroughs left Ipswich for Bath
in 1758 or 1759, but from a letter written by Kirby the
move seems to have been made in the autumn or winter
of the latter year.
QUEEN CHARLOTTE
FROM THE ENGRAVING BY GAINSBOROUGH DUPONT OF THE PICTURE AT
B
CHAPTER IV
BATH
ATH was at its zenith when the Gainsborough
family took up its abode in the city of Bladud.
Every winter saw all that was gayest and most fashion-
able in the London world crowding its streets and walks,
its great Pump Room and Assembly Rooms. Bath then
held the same place with the wealthy English now
occupied by the Riviera and Egypt : it was as frivolous
and as luxurious.
Although the halcyon days of Beau Nash were then
ended, and his garish chariot and cream-coloured horses
no longer drove up and down Milsom Street or on the
Parade, the uncrowned King of Bath still lived ; and died,
at the age of nearly ninety, two years after Gainsborough
settled in the town. All the folly, the wit, wealth and
fashion of London congregated in the handsome, and
then but newly-built Circus, and its adjoining streets
and promenades. Sheridan revelled in the humour of
the place and in its society, which furnished him with the
material for some of his brightest comedies; whilst Miss
Burney noted down for use in her next novel the
vanities and follies, the gossip and scandal of that frolic
crowd.
Goldsmith writes, a year or two after Gainsborough
37
38 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
had settled there, that " upon a stranger's arrival at Bath
he is welcomed by a peal from the Abbey bells, and in
the next place by the voice and music of the city waits."
And in " Humphrey Clinker " we read there was " a peel
of the Abbey bells for the honour of Mr. Bullock, the
eminent cowkeeper of Tottenham who'Jiad just arrived at
Bath to drink the waters for indigestion." The season was
exclusively in the winter, and in May all the smart folk
had departed; to quote Smollett again, "all our gay
birds of passage have taken their flight to Bristol-well
[Clifton], Tunbridge, Brighthelmstone, Scarborough,
Harrogate, etc. Not a soul is seen in this place, but a
few broken-winded parsons waddling like so many crows
along the North Parade." Quin, the famous actor, and
one of Gainsborough's many Bath friends, said the
town "was the cradle of age and a fine slope to the
grave."
No peal of the Abbey bells, I fear, welcomed the
advent of Gainsborough and his family. Mr. Bullock,
" the eminent cowkeeper of Tottenham," and his kin
were naturally far greater personages in the eyes of the
church ringers than the good-looking young artist, who
with wife and daughters and probably a large pile of
painting materials and properties, had just arrived by
the coach from the east and taken lodgings near the
Abbey. Yet how the bells would peal, and how warmly
would the good city of Bath welcome Thomas Gains-
borough, could he again return to that scene of his
triumphs. A mural tablet has only comparatively re-
cently been placed upon the house in which he lived and
painted, which is a remarkable recognition for England.
But if Bath had been in France, and Gainsborough as
great a French artist as he was an English one, I imagine
Thoti. son photo} [Collection of Miss A lice Rothschild
LORD ARCHIBALD HAMILTON
BATH 39
a far more striking memorial of the many years he passed
in the city would have been erected to his memory.
Governor Thicknesse — who appears to have been in
a perpetual state of friction and disagreement with all
mankind, and womankind also, for there is never an
opportunity lost by this ungallant officer of writing dis-
agreeable things and making innuendoes against Mrs.
Gainsborough in his " Memoirs " — thought he now had
the opportunity of causing himself to be considered a
man of taste. With this view, and likewise wishing to
pose before his friends in Bath as a Maecenas, he deter-
mined to intrust Gainsborough with the painting of his
portrait, describing his sitting " as a decoy duck for
customers." But I will give the Governor's own account
of how he introduced Gainsborough to the city. " After
his [Gainsborough's] arrival in Bath, I accompanied him
in search of lodgings, where a good painting-room as to
light, a proper access, etc., could be had, and upon our
return to my house, where his wife was unfortunately
awaiting the event, he told her he had seen lodgings of
fifty pounds a year, which he thought would answer his
purpose. The poor woman, highly alarmed, fearing it all
must come out of her annuity, exclaimed, ' Fifty pounds
a year Mr. Gainsborough! Why you are going to throw
yourself into gaol ! ' But upon my telling her, if she did
not approve of the lodgings at fifty pounds a year, he
should take a house of a hundred and fifty, and that I
would pay the rent if he could not, Margaret's alarms
were moderated." Thicknesse then describes his sitting
to Gainsborough for his portrait " as a decoy duck for
customers," which was in reality a cheap way of obtaining
his presentment by the artist. It is best to quote the
Governor again. "The first sitting," he writes, "not
40 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
above fifteen minutes, is all that has ever been done to
it, and in that state it hangs up in my house at this day ;
business came in so fast at five guineas a head, though
he did not much mend in his colouring, or style, yet
he was obliged to raise his price from five to eight
guineas . . . till he fixed it at forty for a half length and
an hundred for a full one." This goes to prove that
Gainsborough stood in no need of a " decoy duck."
The house to which he went from his lodgings — these
were first at 14, Abbey Churchyard, and later at 8,
Armistier Belvedere — and where he lived from 1760 to
1 774, was one of those large and roomy residences in the
handsome Circus, which had then recently been built by
one of the greatest architects of that time, the elder Wood.
Ten years later Wood's son designed the Royal Crescent,
a range of buildings that recalls some of Palladio's de-
signs, and makes Bath the finest city in the kingdom in
regard to classical architecture, and which caused Walter
Savage Landor, more than half a century after Gains-
borough had left it, to declare that both for beauty and
purity of architecture, Bath surpassed any of the cities
of Italy.
Gainsborough found no lack of "customers" after
settling in his new house, No. 24, The Circus. Sitters
flocked to his studio, which Fulcher says " was thronged
with visitors." " Fortune," said a wit of the day, " seemed
to take up her abode with him ; and his house became
Gains — borough." And, like Opie, Gainsborough is re-
ported to have said that he would be obliged to place
cannon before his door to keep the crowd of would-be
sitters away from it.
In 1760, with the new King, there came into existence
in London a Society of Artists in Spring Gardens, the
M oiv t ray A, Green photo~\
GAINSBOROUGH HOUSE IN BATH
(24, THE CIRCUS)
BATH 41
immediate precursor of the Royal Academy; and to
the second exhibition of this society, in 1761, Gains-
borough contributed, sending a portrait described in
the catalogue, Whole-length of a gentleman. It was the
first portrait he had ever exhibited, and was of Robert
Craggs Nugent. When he sat to Gainsborough, Nugent,
who was in his fiftieth year, was Member of Parliament
for Bristol, having formerly represented St. Mawes.
Seven years later he was created Baron Nugent and
Viscount Clare, and in 1776 received a higher rank in
the peerage, being made Earl Nugent.1 He was Irish,
a poet and a much-married man. Lord Dover writes of
him that he seemed " to have passed his life in seeking
lucrative places and in courting rich widows, in both of
which pursuits he was eminently successful." But per-
haps Lord Nugent's best title to fame is the poem ad-
dressed to him by Goldsmith, known as "The Haunch of
Venison," beginning:
" Thanks, my Lord, for your Ven'son ; nor finer or fatter
Ne'er ranged in a forest, or smoked in a platter."
Gainsborough's portrait of him was pronounced by all
who saw it in Spring Gardens to be an excellent likeness,
and Reynolds, on seeing this work of the unknown painter
from the east, must have felt that a rival had at last arisen
to compete with him on his own ground. In the following
exhibition appeared Gainsborough's portrait of Mr. Poyntz
of Midgham, Berks, and in the catalogue (1762) it is
described as A whole-length of a Gentleman with a Gun.
Mr. Poyntz, was the son of Stephen Poyntz, who had been
1 This portrait of Lord Nugent was at Stowe, the Duke of
Buckingham's, and was sold with all the objects of art in that
place in 1848, when Field- Marshal Sir George Nugent bought it
for ,£106.
42 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
Ambassador to Sweden and France, and whose mother
was Anne Mordaunt, a maid of honour to Queen Caroline,
and the beauty celebrated in a poem called " The Fair
Circassian." He was consequently the brother of Margaret
Georgiana, first Countess Spencer, also a beautiful woman,
and mother of the still more famous beauty, Georgiana
Spencer, afterwards Duchess of Devonshire. William
Poyntz was a keen sportsman, and is appropriately
painted by Gainsborough with his dog and gun. The
portrait had even a greater success than that of Lord
Nugent, and practically established the painter's fame.
It is indeed seldom that an artist leaps with such rapid-
ity to recognition as did Gainsborough with these two
portraits. This particular portrait is now at Althorp,
the seat of Earl Spencer, a house rich in Gainsborough
portraits ; for he also painted William Poyntz's sister,
Lady Spencer, and her daughter Georgiana when a child
of six, and again as a beautiful young married woman in
the heyday of her existence. This portrait of William
Poyntz is a delightful one — the easy attitude, as he rests
with his back against a tree, whose foliage throws a
shimmering light over the figure, is most happily caught.
Later, Gainsborough painted an equally fine whole-length
of Thomas Coke, first Earl of Leicester, now at Holkham,
in which the handsome Norfolk squire is loading his gun.
It is as full of life and open air as that of William Poyntz,
and I do not know any more excellent or more char-
acteristic portraits of true sportsmen, not of the modern
type, but sportsmen to whom battues and huge slaughter
of almost tame birds and ground game were unknown.
So thoroughly had Gainsborough steeped himself be-
fore he left Suffolk in all that gives beauty and charm
to the landscapes of that county — its emerald pastures,
Q
O
i
BATH 43
its woods, streams, and its ever-changing glory of rolling
clouds and misty sunshine — that he could paint the soft
scenery of East Anglia in his studio in the Circus at Bath
as if he were actually amidst his early surroundings,
and when not engaged upon a portrait he would work
steadily upon one of those well-remembered landscapes,
producing in the midst of the folly and frivolous fashion
of Bath such noble pictures as the superb Great Cornard
Woody The Watering-Place, or a group of cottagers,
pictures that are the glory of the English school of
painting.
It would be impossible to identify the pictures shown
by Gainsborough at the Exhibitions in Spring Gardens,
and later at the Royal Academy, if it were not for the
catalogues marked by Horace Walpole, in which that
assiduous dilettante wrote his criticism of the painter's
portraits, A Portrait of a Gentleman, or A Portrait of a
Lady, scarcely conveying the historical value that some
of them possessed. Gainsborough's contribution to the
third Spring Gardens Exhibition was two large landscapes
and two portraits, one of Mr. Medlicott, the other of Quin
the actor, whose acquaintance he had probably made
when a lad in London and when he and Hayman used
to disport themselves in the purlieus of Covent Garden.
Hayman and Quin were cronies, and Smith in his " Life
of Nollekens " tells a characteristic story of these two
worthies. " They were so convivial," he writes, " that
they seldom parted till daylight. One night, ' after beat-
ing the rounds/ and making themselves gloriously drunk,
they attempted, arm in arm, to cross a kennel into which
they both fell, and when they had remained there a
minute or two, Hayman, sprawling out his shambling legs,
kicked Quin. c Hullo ! What are you at now?' stuttered
44 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
Quin. ' At ! Why endeavouring to get up to be sure/
replied the painter, ' for this don't suit my palate' ' Poh !'
replied Quin, ' remain where you are, the watchman will
come by shortly, and he will take us both up? "
When it is remembered that Quin was considered at
that time one of the greatest actors in the country, and
Hayman one of its most distinguished artists, we can
congratulate ourselves that some progress has been
made in matters and manners since the middle of the
eighteenth century.
Gainsborough painted Quin twice. In one portrait he
has represented the actor seated, holding a volume of
plays in his hands. This belonged to the well-known
Bath carrier, Wiltshire, with whom both the painter and
Quin were intimate. The other portrait is at Buckingham
Palace, the head alone. It is a good old face, and reminds
one of the portrait by Hogarth of that excellent philan-
thropist Captain Coram, the founder of the Foundling
Hospital, with the difference that Captain Coram wears
his own long gray locks, whilst the jolly old player wears
a thickly powdered wig. Poor old Quin, who thought
Bath " a cradle of age and a fine slope to the grave," went
to his own grave (1766) soon after he sat to Gainsborough,
at the age of seventy-three. He was of Irish birth, and
had played at " old Drury" with both Booth and Gibber,
and also with Garrick at Covent Garden. He was excel-
lent both in comic and tragic parts, and reached his
highest level as Falstaff, in which he was unapproached.
Quin came to Bath about 1746, and remained there until
his death, twenty years later. Full of wit and humour,
the old actor must have been one of the city's greatest
attractions. He gave lessons in elocution to George III.
when Prince of Wales, and is reported to have said, when
Gray photo}
{Collection of James Orrock, Esq.
MR. OZIER
BATH 45
told how well the king delivered his first speech from the
throne, " I taught the boy." His monument is on the wall
in the Abbey Church, with an inscription written by
Garrick.
Until Gainsborough came to live in Bath he had had
few opportunities of seeing and studying the works of
the great painters of the Low Countries, but there he
was within easy reach of many country houses richly
stored with the works of these and other artists of the
past. Of these houses the principal were Badminton, the
Duke of Beaufort's; Longleat, Lord Bath's; Corsham,
Lord Methuen's, where there were some excellent paint-
ings by Spanish masters; Bowood, Lord Lansdowne's;
and Wilton, Lord Pembroke's, where he could take his
fill of some of the finest portraits painted by the great
Sir Antony Vandyck during his stay in this country.
Gainsborough never tired of copying Vandyck, whose
paintings were to him what Michael Angelo's frescoes
were to Sir Joshua Reynolds, altogether sublime.
Amongst his copies were the great group of the Herbert
family in the " Double Cube " room at Wilton, and some
from the works of Velasquez, Teniers, Wynants, Murillo,
and Titian.
Gainsborough exhibited many portraits and landscapes
during the first seven years of the existence of the newly-
established Royal Academy, with unfailing regularity;
but, unlike Sir Joshua Reynolds, who had the methodical
habit of keeping a register in yearly note-books of all the
pictures he painted during the twelve months, Gains-
borough unfortunately kept no record of his work, which
adds another difficulty in placing his pictures, either as
to period or to sequence, and in determining whether
they were painted at Bath or in London.
46 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
During the last four of the fourteen years that Gains-
borough lived in Bath — from 1770 to 1774 — we know
that he painted seventeen portraits and fifteen landscapes,
all of which he exhibited at the Royal Academy from
year to year. Among the most notable of these seven-
teen portraits, besides the one of Quin, to which refer-
ence has been already made, was the superb full length
he painted in 1765 or 1766 of Quin's brother actor,
David Garrick, which is now the artistic glory of Stratford -
on-Avon. It was shown at the Academy in the summer
of 1766, and was declared by the great actor's wife to
be " the best portrait ever painted of my Davy." Garrick
is represented standing in a garden, leaning against a
pedestal on which is a bust of Shakespeare, and round this
he has placed his right arm. He is dressed in a richly
embroidered blue and gold-laced coat, and resplendent
scarlet waistcoat ; the background is richly wooded, and
in the distance the famous bridge at Wilton, designed by
Inigo Jones, is introduced. The astonishing vivacity and
mobility for which the great actor was so renowned are
wonderfully rendered in the face, and Garrick's eyes,
which could express every emotion, from the tenderest
feeling to the wildest fury, are radiant with good humour
and kindness. No wonder Mrs. Garrick liked this the
best of the many portraits of her husband, who had been
painted more often than any man of his day, by Sir
Joshua, Zoffany, and every painter of note of the time.
Gainsborough loved to paint his actor friend, and there
are no less than five portraits of Garrick from his brush,
but none are so good as this full-length in the Town
Hall of Shakespeare's town, which is traditionally said
to have been presented to that place either by Garrick
himself, or by his widow shortly after his death. However,
\Toivn Hall, Stratford-on-Avon
DAVID GARRICK
[Common Room, Christ Church, Oxford
DAVID GARRICK
BATH 47
there exists a bill in the Stratford municipal archives
kept at the Town Hall, stating that " £63 had been paid
to Mr. Gainsborough for Mr. Garrick's picture." It is
thought possible that this sum was paid for the mag-
nificently carved gilt frame of the picture, which certainly
is sufficiently elaborate to have cost that amount. When
this portrait was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in
1885 it stood out above all the other Gainsboroughs in
the room, and as few of the crowd which thronged that
exhibition had ever been to Stratford-on-Avon, it was the
first occasion on which they had seen this masterpiece of
the artist.
Two other well-known actors, Henderson and Foote,
were also painted by Gainsborough at Bath. But with
Foote, as with Garrick, the painter found much difficulty
in giving the expression he wanted, they were perpetually
changing their expression. " Rot them," Gainsborough is
said to have petulantly cried, " for a couple of rogues ! They
have every one's face but their own."
Henderson was a youth of twenty-five when he sat to
Gainsborough. Born in 1747 he was, like Quin, a son of
Erin. He appeared for the first time on the stage at a
theatre in Bath. Gifted with the talent and the wit that
so many of his countrymen possess, he became an im-
mense favourite of Gainsborough, who not only painted
his portrait, but made him a present of it, together with
much excellent advice, which, as he was twenty years the
elder he had every right to give. He painted the young
actor twice, the second portrait appearing at the Academy
in 1780. In a letter to Henderson, Gainsborough gives
the following opinion of Garrick. " Stick to Garrick as
close as you can, for your life. You should follow his
heels like his shadow in sunshine . . Garrick is the
48 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
greatest creature living in every respect : he is worth study-
ing in every action. Every view and every idea of him is
worthy of being stored up for imitation ; and I have ever
found him a generous and sincere friend : look upon him,
Henderson, with your imitative eyes, for when he drops
you'll have nothing but poor old Nature's book to look
in."
This letter is dated from Bath, June 27th, 1773, the
year after Henderson had first appeared on the stage,
and when his acting had attracted Garrick's admiration.
So full of enthusiasm was the great player that he pre-
dicted that young Henderson would reach the topmost
rung of the actor's ladder. The Bath theatre was crowded
nightly to see the new Roscius in Hamlet. Gainsborough
shared Garrick's admiration for the young actor's talent,
which by contemporary accounts must have been of the
highest order, and until the early close of Henderson's
life, they were devoted friends.
All who were distinguished in the many-sided life of
the day passed through Gainsborough's studio in the
Circus between the years of 1763 and 1773. Richardson
and Sterne, Sheridan and Burke represented Literature,
the Drama and Politics ; they were followed by lights of
lesser degree. Amongst Gainsborough's military portraits
the most important, although of an unimportant warrior,
is that equestrian one of General Hony wood. The florid
old General is riding through a wooded landscape on a
bay horse, which like most of Gainsborough's horses, is
a somewhat wooden steed, for although no one was
happier in painting a pointer or a Pomeranian, and
although the cattle in his landscapes equal those of Albert
Cuyp, he never had success with horses, which invariably
recall the rocking species of our childhood. The most
Gruyfkoto]
\_Collcction of J antes Orrock. Esq.
GENERAL WOLFE
BATH 49
illustrious soldier that he painted was General Wolfe, of
whom there are two bust portraits in existence, in one of
which he wears a hat; in the other he is bareheaded.
This latter I am able to reproduce in this little book
through the kindness of its owner. It is by far the finest
portrait of Wolfe that I know. The young General had
an unfortunate profile, a retreating forehead and chin, and
an up-tilted nose. Gainsborough hides these shortcom-
ings by painting him almost full face, thus avoiding an
expression which possessed nothingimposing,and entirely
lacked any suggestion of what is regarded as " military."
The expression is bright and intellectual, the eyes full of
fire. As Wolfe left England in 1758 to meet his glorious
death on the Heights of Abraham, these portraits must
have been painted whilst Gainsborough was still at
Ipswich. The one with the hat belongs to Mrs. Pym of
Braxted, Kent.
Although Gainsborough never attempted to produce
works in what was then called "the grand style," or what
we should now call Historical and Imaginary subjects,
there is evidence in a letter he wrote to Garrick,that at one
timehehad contemplated painting an imaginary picture of
which Shakespeare was to be the subject. It was during the
commemoration of the Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford-
on-Avon that he wrote to Garrick of this projected picture
which was "to take the form from the Bard's pictures
and statues, just enough to preserve his likeness past the
doubt of all blockheads at first sight." In another letter
to Garrick, dated Bath, August 23rd, 1768, he says: "I
doubt I stand accused (if not accurst) all this time for my
neglect in not going to Stratford, and giving you a line
from there as I promised; but, what can one do such
weather as this — continual rainy? My genius is so
E
50 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
damped by it, that I can do nothing to please me. I have
been several days rubbing in and rubbing out my design
of Shakespeare, and hang me if I think I shall let it go,
or let you see it at last. I am willing, like an ass as I am,
to expose myself a little out of the simple portrait way,
and had an idea of showing where that inimitable poet
had his ideas from, by an immediate ray darting down
upon his eye turned up for the purpose; but confound it,
I can make nothing of my ideas, there has been such a
fall of rain from the same quarter. You shall not see it,
for I will cut it before you can come. Tell me, dear Sir,
when you propose coming to Bath that I may be quick
enough in my motions. Shakespeare's bust is a silly,
smiling thing, and I have not sense enough to make him
more sensible in the picture, and so I tell ye, you shall
not see it. I must make a plain picture of him standing
erect, and give it an old look, as if it had been painted at
the time he lived; and there we shall fling 'em. I am,
dear Sir, your most obedient, humble servant, THOMAS
GAINSBOROUGH."
It is as well that Gainsborough's imaginary portrait of
Shakespeare was never completed, for to judge by the
bust of the poet, round which Garrick has placed his arm
in the portrait at Stratford-on-Avon, the artist's concep-
tion of the Bard would doubtless have been what he him-
self calls it, "a silly, smiling thing," and as unlike the
original one as was Roubiliac's affected statue, which at
that period was the accepted likeness of Shakespeare.
The years at Bath were busy ones for our painter,
especially after 1767. Among his numerous sitters was
Lady Grosvenor, of whom he painted a full length, but of
this only the upper part remains, the picture having been
cut in two by the lady's irate husband — the divorce case
{Collection of the Duke of Argyll
LORD FREDERICK CAMPBELL
BATH 5i
in which she figured with H.R.H. the Duke of Cumber-
land was one of the great causes celebres of the early days
of George the Third's reign. We must be grateful, how-
ever, for small mercies, as this picture of the peccant
countess might have been utterly destroyed, as was the
fate of. Lady Derby's portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
instead of being cut. It is difficult to understand what
possible consolation it could have been to Lords Gros-
venor and Derby to mutilate and destroy the portraits of
their inconstant wives.
At Inverary Castle are three noble full-length portraits
which also belong to the years at Bath. One of these is of
Field-Marshal Seymour Conway in general's uniform:
there is a replica of this portrait in the Town Hall of St.
Heliers, Jersey, of which island the Field- Marshal was
Governor. The two others are family portraits, one of John
Campbell, fourth Duke of Argyll, and the other of his son,
Lord Frederick Campbell, who is seated, and wears the
robes of Lord Clerk Register. The portrait of the Duke,
in which Gainsborough has painted him in his peer's
robes and wearing the Order of the Thistle, is as fine
in its way as a Titian or a Tintoretto. With one hand
he grasps the baton of his Lord High Stewardship of
Scotland; the other is lightly placed upon his coronet.
There is about this picture an atmosphere and a senti-
ment which suggest his country's motto, " Nemo me im-
pune lacesset " which must have pleased both the painter
and his subject.
At Ickworth, Lord Bristol's house near Bury St. Ed-
munds, is a fine full-length of Captain Augustus Hervey,
painted by Gainsborough at this period. The gallant
Captain, who later became Earl of Bristol, and a Lord of
the Admiralty, wears a naval uniform, and holds a long
52 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
telescope in his hand — field-glasses were not then invented.
He leans against an anchor, and in the background a
man-of-war rides on a somewhat tempestuous sea. Horace
Walpole, who was not often very favourable in his criti-
cisms of pictures, writes of this one of Captain Hervey
that it was "very good and one of the best modern pictures
I have seen."
During the years that Gainsborough lived at Bath he
employed Wiltshire, who seems to have been above the
average in useful intelligence, a man of real taste, and
a deservedly popular functionary, as the carrier of his
pictures. Wiltshire loved pictures, and admired Gains-
borough's work so deeply that he would never accept any
payment for carrying them to London. "No, no," he
would say, " I admire painting too much." Gainsborough,
who was liberal and generous to a fault, would not be out-
done, and gave the carrier a considerable number of his
paintings. Amongst others was that noble portrait of old
Orpin, now in the national collection. Another of Gains-
borough's gifts to the fortunate carrier was that most ex-
quisite landscape called The Harvest Waggon, a waggon
passing through a lane in the gloaming; the driver has
stopped his team to allow a peasant girl to climb up
into the waggon : she and another girl in the picture are
Gainsborough's daughters. The leader of the team, which
is held by a youth who looks like a Greek upon an antique
frieze, is also a portrait of a horse given to the painter by
Wiltshire, and which he often introduced into his land-
scapes. This painting now belongs to Lord Tweedmouth
— and Gainsborough knew its value, for he told Wiltshire
that he liked it better than any other of his paintings of
such subjects.
Gainsborough contributed four pictures to the Exhibi-
Hyatt photo]
[Collection of Henry Pfnngst, Esq.
LANDSCAPE
BATH 53
tion in 1769. His name appears with the letters R.A.
after it in the first catalogue of the institution among the
thirty-six original members, and was not included in the
two lists of artists' names submitted by Reynolds for the
approval of the King. " It is evident," writes Mr. Torn
Taylor, in a note in Leslie's " Life of Reynolds," " that
there was a determination to secure him for the new
Academy; and that he let himself be secured, but he
seems never to have taken any part whatever in the work
of the Academy, and his membership is hardly traceable
in the Academy records except by a quarrel occasionally
about the hanging of his pictures."
On his election Gainsborough presented a picture to
the Academy which he called^ Romantic Landscape with
Sheep at a Fountain. A companion landscape to The
Hai'vest Waggon^ and almost a replica of it, called Land-
scape with Figures was exhibited by Gainsborough at the
Academy in 1771. It is as fine as the first work, and
again the painter introduced portraits of his family. It
is now in the possession of Mr. Lionel Phillips. There
can be but few artistic possessions which are more to be
envied — if the failing is permissible — than one of these
beautiful landscape paintings by Gainsborough. Such
pictures are a ceaseless joy to those who value the highest
expression that English art has attained.
Among the portraits sent to the Academy in 1769 by
Gainsborough, were those of Isabella, Lady Molyneux, of
Lord Rivers, and two others, together with the head of a
boy. In the following year he exhibited six pictures, but
only one of the portraits has been identified : it is one of
the five he painted of Garrick. The Academy of 1771
showed five full-lengths by Gainsborough, two of which
were of ladies — Lady Sussex with her daughters, Lady
54 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
Barbara Yelverton, and Lady Ligonier; the two others
were of Lord Ligonier and Mr. Nuthall.
The next year Wiltshire carted from Bath to London
no less than fourteen paintings by Gainsborough. Of
these, ten were landscapes, and the remainder portraits.
But unfortunately none of these have been identified,
Fulcher vaguely describing some of the landscapes of that
year as "drawings in imitation of oil painting." If Raf-
faelli's invention of painting with oil sticks had been made
in the middle of the eighteenth century instead of the
beginning of the twentieth, one would be inclined to
believe that Gainsborough had tried this new process from
Fulcher's account, but it is probable that these landscapes
were drawn with coloured chalks, of which some beautiful
examples are occasionally met with: or perhaps they
were in water colour combined with body colour, painted
on canvas and then varnished in order to give them the
brilliancy and surface of oil painting — a process known
on the continent as "gouache" and generally reserved
for scene-painting.
After 1772 there was an interval in Gainsborough's ex-
hibits at the Academy, and it was not until four years
later that any of his pictures were seen in London.
It has already been said that Gainsborough was pas-
sionately fond of anything relating to music, and William
Jackson, organist, author and composer, who was one of
his greatest musical cronies, has left an interesting ac-
count of the painter's love of music, or it would be more
correct to say, of musical instruments. " There were times,"
writes Jackson, "when music seemed to be Gainsborough's
employment and painting his diversion. When I first
knew Gainsborough he lived at Bath, where Giardini had
been exhibiting his then unrivalled powers on the violin.
BATH 55
His excellent performance made the painter enamoured
of that instrument, and he was not satisfied until he pos-
sessed it. He next heard Abel on the viol-di-gamba. The
violin was hung on the willow, Abel's viol-di-gamba was
purchased, and the house resounded with melodious thirds
and fifths. My friend's passion had now a fresh object —
Fischer's hautboy ; but I do not recollect that he deprived
Fischer of his instrument; and though he procured a
hautboy, I never heard him make the least attempt on it.
Probably his ear was too delicate to bear the disagree-
able sounds which necessarily attend the first beginnings
on a wind instrument. The next time I saw Gains-
borough was in the character of King David. He had
hired a harper at Bath — the performer was soon harpless
— and now Fischer, Abel, Giardini were all forgotten;
there was nothing like chords and arpeggios ! He really
stuck to the harp long enough to play several airs with
variations, and in a little time would nearly have ex-
hausted all the pieces usually performed on an instrument
incapable of modulation (this was not a pedal harp), when
another visit from Abel brought him back to the viol-di-
gamba. This, and an occasional flirtation with the fiddle,
continued some years, when, as ill-luck would have it, he
heard Crosdill — but by some irregularity of conduct, for
which I cannot account, he neither took up nor bought
the violoncello. All his passion for the bass was vented
in description of Crosdill's tone and bowing, which was
rapturous and enthusiastic to the last degree. Happening
on a time to see a theorbo in a picture of Vandyke's,
Gainsborough concluded, because, perhaps, it was finely
painted, that the theorbo must be a fine instrument. He
recollected to have heard of a German professor, and
ascending to his garret found him dining on roasted
56 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
apples and smoking his pipe, with his theorbo beside him.
' I am come to buy your lute — name your price, arid
here's your money.' ' I cannot sell my lute.' ' No, not
for a guinea or two? but you must sell it, I tell you!'
' My lute is worth much money — it is worth ten guineas!'
' Aye, that it is — see, here's the money.' So saying he
took up the instrument, laid down the price, went half
way down the stairs and returned. 'I have done but
half my errand. What is your lute worth if I have not
your book? ' ( What book, Master Gainsborough ? ' ' Why,
the book of airs you have composed for the lute!'
1 Ah, sir, I can never part with my book ! ' ' Poh ! you
can make another at any time; this is the book I mean
— there's ten guineas for it — so once more good day."
He went down a few steps and returned again. ' What
use is your book to me if I don't understand it? And
your lute, you may take it again if you won't teach me to
play on it. Come home with me and give me the
first lesson.' 'I will come to-morrow! ' You must come
now!' 'I must dress myself.' 'For what? You are the
best figure I have seen to-day!' 'I must shave, sir?'
' I honour your beard ! ' 'I must, however, put on a
wig!' *D n your wig! Your cap and beard become
you! Do you think if Vandyke was to paint you he'd
let you be shaved?' In this manner he frittered away
his musical talents, and though possessed of ear, taste
and genius, he never had application enough to learn his
notes. He scorned to take the first steps, the second was
out of his reach, and the summit unattainable."
One wishes there were more such descriptions extant
of Gainsborough's oddities and delightful enthusiasms,
for one gleans a far acuter impression of the painter from
this scene with the owner of the lute than from the whole
BATH 57
of Thicknesse's narrative, much of which is wholly un-
trustworthy. Oddly enough, it was owing to a quarrel
with Thicknesse regarding a musical instrument that
Gainsborough left Bath for his final home in London,
and the following is the Governor's version of the matter.
" I cannot help relating," he says in his sketch of the life
of Gainsborough, " a very singular and extraordinary
circumstance which arose between him [Gainsborough],
Mrs. Thicknesse, and myself; for though it is very pain-
ful for me to reflect on and much more so to relate, it
turned out fortunately for him and thereby lessened my
concern, as he certainly had never gone from Bath to
London had not this untoward circumstance arisen be-
tween us; and it is no less singular, that I who had
taken so much pains to remove him from Ipswich to
Bath, should be the cause, after twenty years [fourteen
it should be] afterwards, of driving him from thence."
Thicknesse then goes on to explain that the cause
of the "untoward circumstance," as he calls it, which
led to his quarrel with Gainsborough was, that in the
first instance the artist had painted a portrait of Mrs.
Thicknesse before she became the Governor's wife, and
that Thicknesse had wished to have his own portrait
painted as a pendant to that of the lady.1 Knowing the
1 Mrs. Thicknesse was the Lieutenant-Governor's third wife. She
was the daughter of Thomas Ford, brother of Dr. Ford, Queen
Charlotte's physician. Before she was married she gave Sunday
concerts at which Dr. Arne, Tenducci and others assisted the ama-
teurs of fashion, Anne's singing to the guitar and playing on the
viol-di-gamba being the principal attraction. Her dancing was so
good that she was praised by no less a personage than Lord Chester-
field. Her father, however, disapproved of her singing in public,
and having secured a magistrate's warrant had his daughter taken
prisoner at the house of a friend where she had taken refuge. Ulti-
58 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
painter's passionate fondness for musical instruments, he
arranged that Mrs. Thicknesse should make him a pre-
sent of a valuable viol-di-gamba. Accordingly the Thick-
nesses asked the Gainsboroughs to supper, and after the
meal Mrs. Thicknesse remarked how much she would
enjoy hearing Gainsborough play on her precious viol,
which he accordingly did, and "charmingly too," says
Thicknesse, " one of his dear friend Abel's lessons, and
Mrs. Thicknesse told him that he deserved the instru-
ment for his reward and desired his acceptance of it, but
said, "At your leisure, give me my husband's picture to
hang at the side of my own." Gainsborough was highly
delighted by the gift of the viol-di-gamba, and next
morning " he sketched a canvas," continues Thicknesse,
" called upon me to attend, and he soon finished the
head, rubbed in the dead colouring of the full-length,
painted my Newfoundland dog at my feet, and then it
was put by, and no more said of it or done to it."
Some time then elapsed, and one day when the Thick-
nesses called at the house in the Circus to see how the
Governor's portrait had progressed, Gainsborough invited
mately, however, she was able to give a subscription concert at the
little theatre in the Haymarket in the spring of 1760, which her
friends had secured for her, and raised ,£1,500 in subscriptions. But
Anne's father was relentless. He had the street and the theatre
watched by Bow Street runners, and she would have been arrested
again if Lord Tankerville, Lieut.-Colonel of the Foot Guards, had
not threatened to send for a detachment of his regiment. She made
Thicknesse a good wife, and was a kind mother to his children,
one of whom became Lord Audley. After Thicknesse's death she
lived in France, and was arrested during the Commune, only
escaping the guillotine by the death of Robespierre. The last
fifteen years of her life were spent with a friend in the Edgware
Road, in whose house she died, in 1824, at the age of eighty-
six.
BATH 59
Mrs. Thicknesse to go into his studio. She fully expected
to see her husband's portrait well advanced, if not finished,
but to her disgust the painter led her up to the canvas on
which was the portrait of the musician Fischer, that
splendid full-length which until recently was at Hampton
Court, " completely finished," writes the aggrieved Thick-
nesse, " and mine standing in its tatter-a-rag condition
by the side of it." Mrs. Thicknesse burst into tears at
the sight and " flounced " out of the studio, and imme-
diately upon returning home wrote to Gainsborough that
she would thank him to put her husband's portrait in the
garret. On the receipt of this message Gainsborough at
once returned the viol-di-gamba. Then followed a pretty
quarrel, which culminated in Gainsborough sending the
still unfinished portrait to the Governor. This his irate
wife returned with a note in which her husband says,
" she bid him take his brush and first rub out the counten-
ance of the truest and warmest friend he ever had, and
so done, then blot him for ever from his memory." We
know there are always two sides to a quarrel as to a
shilling. The above is the Governor's version, but more
probably the true history of this musical squabble be-
tween the Gainsboroughs and Thicknesses is that given
by Allan Cunningham, who had it from one of Gains-
borough's relatives. " The painter," writes Cunningham,
" put a hundred guineas privately into the hands of Mrs.
Thicknesse for the viol-di-gamba ; her husband, who may
not have been aware of what passed, renewed his wish for
his portrait, and obtained what he conceived was a promise
that it should be painted. This double benefaction was,
however, more than Gainsborough had contemplated; he
commenced the portrait, but there it stopped, and after
a time, resenting some injurious expressions from the lips
60 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
of the Governor, the artist sent him the picture, rough
and unfinished as it was, and returned also the viol-di-
gamba."
I imagine that Thicknesse and his wife must have been
thorns in poor Gainsborough's flesh, and possibly one of
his reasons for leaving Bath was that they haunted it
every winter ; otherwise there was no special inducement
for him to give up his residence in a place where he had
made his home for so many years, and where he had
as much work as he could possibly find time to accom-
plish. But people of the type of Governor Thicknesse
can become an intolerable nuisance. He himself shows
the bent of their minds when he describes his wife's action
and his own over the viol-di-gamba, a sprat to catch a
mackerel, and it is not surprising if Gainsborough were
willing to face any change of life to get away from
them.
During the fourteen years Gainsborough had passed
at Bath he had become known throughout England as
one of the greatest artists of the day ; when he had arrived
there his name had not been heard outside his native
county. His portraits were now as eagerly awaited on
the walls of the Academy as those of the President, and
together with his beautiful landscapes always called forth
the keenest interest and admiration, so that he was sure
of a warm welcome in London, and a position in the
world of art only second to that of Sir Joshua.
But before we take leave of our painter at Bath there
are some of the portraits he painted there which must not
be overlooked. Among the many beautiful women he
painted there was not one more refined and more purely
featured than Elizabeth Linley, the eldest daughter of the
musician, Thomas Linley, born in 1754 at Bath. Gains-
Gray t>hotd\ [Dnlivick Gallery
THE TWO MISS LINLEYS (MRS. SHERIDAN AND MRS. TICKELL)
Duhvich Gallery
SAMUEL LINLEY, R.N.
BATH 61
borough must have often seen her as a child of nine stand-
ing with her little brother at the entrance to the Pump
Room selling tickets for her father's benefit concerts; and
later also, when she had become the acknowledged beauty
of the town—" The Fair Maid of Bath," as she was called,
and from whom Foote took the title of one of his plays,
"The Maid of Bath" — surrounded by admirers and
courted by the rich and titled. The old miser, Walter
Long, offered to lay his thousands at her feet, regardless
of the expense of a prospective wedding ; when she sang
at Oxford the whole University went wild over her, and
later when she sang in one of Handel's oratorios at Covent
Garden in the Lent of 1773, even that most virtuous of
sovereigns, George the Third, is said to have publicly
expressed his admiration, and, if Horace Walpole is to
be believed, " ogl'd her as much as he dares do in so holy
a place as an oratorio." Her fate was to marry, when
eighteen, the most brilliant, if not the most reputable, man
of the day, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who had proved
his devotion to Miss Linley by fighting two duels of which
she, like Helen of Troy, was the cause of battle. Their
married life, although it commenced with a runaway
wedding and was short, was a happy one.
Gainsborough painted several portraits of this beautiful
woman, the most beautiful of them all being the one at
Knole, where she appears as a child of thirteen or fourteen
with her little brother Tom peering over her shoulder.
This portrait is but a sketch, and was probably painted
at one or two sittings, but nothing more beautiful can be
imagined than these two heads of the girl and boy. She
has that pathetic expression so strongly marked in all her
portraits, and a look of subdued awe is on the boy's face
which reminds one of the head of the Infant Saviour in
62 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
Raffaelle's great picture of the Madonna at Dresden.
There is a life-size group of Elizabeth Linley with her
sister, who afterwards became Mrs. Tickell, in the Dulwich
Gallery, but it is a less beautiful likeness than her head
at Knole, or the full-length portrait of her seated on a
bank, belonging to Lord Rothschild, which was painted
by Gainsborough in 1783, and was formerly at Delapre"
Abbey.
Even ladies admired Mrs. Sheridan, which is an un-
common thing for ladies to do; and they said so, which
is more uncommon still. Madame d' Arblay writes in 1 779
that "the elegance of Mrs. Sheridan's beauty is unequalled
by any I ever saw, except Mrs. Crewe." Macaulay has
called her " the beautiful mother of a beautiful race " ;
her grandchildren were famous for their beauty, and three
of her granddaughters were the famous trio of sisters — all
gifted with brains as well as good looks — the Duchess
of Somerset, Mrs. Norton, and Lady Dufferin, the mother
of the well-known statesman and diplomat, Lord Dufferin,
who wrote thus of his great-grandmother, " For Miss
Linley I have not words to express my admiration. It is
evident, from the universal testimony of all who knew
her, that there has seldom lived a sweeter, gentler, more
tender or lovable human being." Wilkes said of her:
" She is superior to all I have heard of her, and is the most
modest, pleasing and delicate flower I have seen for a long
time." Dr. Parr said she was " quite celestial." A friend
of Rogers, the poet, wrote " Miss Linley had a voice as
of the cherub choir. She took my daughter on her lap
and sang a number of childish songs, with such a play-
fulness of manner and such a sweetness of look and voice
as was quite enchanting." Garrick always alluded to her
as "the saint"; one bishop called her "the connecting
[Collection of Lord Rothschild
MRS. SHERIDAN
[Collection of Charles Wertheimer, Esq.
MRS. SHERIDAN
BATH 63
link between a woman and an angel;" and another said,
" to look at her when singing was like looking into the
face of a seraph." Evidently kings and bishops were
great admirers of the peerless Eliza of Bath.
Sheridan must have had some good in him to have
been so loved by this saint-like woman. In a letter to a
friend she writes, " Poor Dick and I have always been
struggling against the stream, and shall probably continue
to do so until the end of our lives; yet we would not
change sentiments and sensations with for all his
estates."
Gainsborough not only painted Miss Linley, but he
also modelled a bust of her beautiful head and shoulders.
He had been to one of the concerts at which she sang —
he never missed one where her beautiful voice was to be
heard — and on his return to the Circus he got some clay
out of a beer-barrel and in a few minutes had made a little
bust, which, when dry, he coloured. Thicknesse declared
that it was better than any portrait he had ever painted of
her ; but the next day the bust disappeared ; no doubt it
had been " dusted " by the maid, and had come to pieces
in the process, as so many fragile objects do in similar
circumstances. Leslie is said to have had a cast taken
from another bust Gainsborough made of Miss Linley,
but that also perished, probably in the same way as the
first one.
According to Fulcher, Gainsborough occasionally
modelled busts of his friends in the evening, taking his
material from the wax candles burning before him : these
were said to be admirable likenesses. Probably these
little portraits in wax were the profiles of his friends,
like those little elaborately coloured wax medallions
which one sees in museums, made by Italian artists
64 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
in the sixteenth and following centuries, of which the
most remarkable, of a late period, are those of the clever
medallist, Tassie, who although of Italian descent was
born in Glasgow, where he had a great vogue in the
middle of the eighteenth century.
Jackson, the portrait painter, refers to Gainsborough's
love of modelling in the following memoranda. " He
made . . . little clay men for human figures; he modelled
his horses and his cows, and knobs of coal sat for rocks
. . . the limbs of trees which he collected would have
made no inconsiderable wood-rick, and many an ass
has been led into his painting-room." Reynolds, too,
refers to this habit of Gainsborough's of bringing still-
life subjects into his studio. " Stumps of trees, weeds
and animals of various kinds; and designed not from
memory but immediately from the objects." Reynolds
adds that he even found " a kind of model of landscapes
on his table composed of broken stones, dried herbs and
pieces of broken looking-glass, which he magnified and
improved into rocks, trees, and water. ... It shows the
solicitude about everything that related to his art, that
he wished to have his objects embodied as it were, and
distinctly before him ; that he neglected nothing that
could help his faculties in exercise, and derived hints
from any sort of combination." This little " model of
landscape," as Sir Joshua calls the miniature copy of
natural objects which Gainsborough used for his land-
scapes and the backgrounds to his portraits, was sold at
Christie's a few years ago.
Mrs. Sheridan died when eight-and-thirty ; her brother
Tom, the beautiful bright-eyed lad who appears on the
same canvas with her at Knole, was drowned whilst still
a youth when on a visit with his sisters to the Duke of
Graves photo\
[Collection of Earl Spencer
THE HONOURABLE GEORGIANA SPENCER, AFTERWARDS
DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE
BATH 65
Ancaster at Grimsthorpe. Another of her three brothers,
who was in the Navy, was lost at sea : all were remark-
ably handsome, as one can see by the portraits by
Gainsborough at Dulwich. A small replica of the portrait
of Mrs. Sheridan which belongs to Lord Rothschild used
formerly to be at Dover House, Lord Clifden's, where it
formed a pendant to one of the Duchess of Devonshire,
but whether it was of Georgiana Spencer or Lady Betty
Foster is uncertain. Both these portraits were painted in
oil in a monochrome of Vandyke brown. Some experts
believe that they were the work of Gainsborough's
nephew, young Dupont, which had been copied and
reduced to the scale of 23 inches by 15 inches, in order
that the engraver might work from them. That of the
Duchess of Devonshire was engraved by Messrs. Graves
and has been reproduced and photographed in countless
numbers.
It was Gainsborough's habit, when he received a com-
mission to execute a full-length portrait, to first make a
small sketch of the figure generally in oils, before begin-
ning to work on the full-size canvas, upon which he
would lay in the head, the figure, the drapery and other
accessories when the small sketch was completed. These
he would completely finish, painting in the head at the
final sittings of his model.
At Althorp there is a delightful half-length portrait
of Georgiana Spencer, when a child of six. She wears a
tightly fitting little lace cap over her thick auburn hair
which is cut in a fringe across her forehead. Her frock
is adorned with cherry-coloured bows, and her little hands
are demurely folded across her chest. There is little
promise of future beauty in the face, with its pert little
upturned nose and merry blue eyes ; but this girl was
F
66 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
destined to grow up into one of the most famously
beautiful women of her time, and the most resplendent
of duchesses, the lady to whom Southey wrote the verse
with the refrain
" Oh lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure,
Whence learnt thou that heroic measure?"
The Duchess had written some verses after visiting
William Tell's chapel on the Lake of Lucerne, in which
her expressions of hatred towards tyrants, and her
admiration of that very patriotic but mythical Swiss
hero, roused the future Laureate's praise and sym-
pathy.
Born in 1758, Georgiana Spencer married William,
fifth Duke of Devonshire, when only sixteen, and died
in her forty-eighth year after a brilliant, but not very
happy life. Whether the Duchess owed more to Sir
Joshua and Gainsborough for their portraits of her, or
they owed more to her for sitting so often to them both,
it is not easy to determine. In any case it must have
been surpassingly difficult to have done her justice, for
her charm consisted more in fascination of manner and
expression, than in great beauty of features, like the
beautiful Mrs. Crewe, Mrs. Sheridan, and the Duchess
of Rutland. Duchess Georgiana not only possessed that
indefinable quality which for want of a better name we
call charm, but also as a contemporary expressed it,
" feminine softness and dignity of person."
Gainsborough painted a full-length of her at the time
of her marriage. She is dressed in white with her hair,
which was abundant and beautiful, brushed off her fore-
head and falling in thick curls on her neck. This portrait
is at Althorp, her old home: it was exhibited at the
THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE
FROM THE OIL SKETCH IN MONOCHROME IN THE POSSESSION OF
GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE
{.Collection of Earl Spencei
GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE
BATH 67
Academy of 1778, and a mezzotint of it was published
in 1808 by Barney.
Gainsborough is said to have found the Duchess's
mouth the most difficult that he ever had to paint, and
on one occasion, after painting and repainting it in vain,
he dashed his brush across the canvas in despair, crying
" Your Grace is too hard for me."
Over the life-size portrait of the Duchess, the one
known as the " Lost Duchess," there will always hang a
mystery. As I have already said it was Gainsborough's
custom to make a preliminary sketch, sometimes in oil,
sometimes in "grisaille," sometimes in colour, before
commencing the life-size painting. I have seen one of
these sketches, that for the portrait of Queen Charlotte
at Buckingham Palace. It was found in a shop at
Homburg, and had undoubtedly been in the Palace of
that place, brought there by Queen Charlotte's daughter,
the Princess Elizabeth who married the Landgrave of
Hesse-Homburg.
For my own part I believe, after much uncertainty in
the matter, that the so-called " Lost Duchess," which dis-
appeared so mysteriously from Messrs. Agnews' and was
found again after many years, is the portrait of Duchess
Elizabeth of Devonshire, and not of Duchess Georgiana.
But it will always remain one of those unexplained
mysteries like the Man in the Iron Mask and Casper
Hauser. This " Lost Duchess " painting of Gainsborough
is singular in another respect: no work of the artist, and
no picture of modern times has been so frequently repro-
duced in every possible style and size.
Conspicuous amongst a large number of Gainsborough's
sketches and studies in the British Museum are two in
black and white chalk on blue paper, studies for this
68 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
portrait. They are amongst the most fascinating of any
of our artist's studies, studies upon which he generally
spent only a few moments, but which show the perfec-
tion of his art in their skill and unstudied grace of move-
ment.
{Collection of Henry Pfuugst, Esq
STUDY
f-r
Hyatt photo} [Collection of Henry Pfungst, Esq.
STUDY FOR A PORTRAIT GROUP
Hyatt f>hoto\
[Collection of Henry Pfungst, Esq.
SKETCH
CHAPTER V
LONDON
IT was in the summer of 1774 that Gainsborough, with
his wife and daughters, left Bath and went to London.
Thirty years had come and gone since Gainsborough had
been in the capital, a raw country lad, under the bad
influence of Hayman ; he now returned to pass the re-
mainder of his life there, and although some of his best
work had been done during the fourteen years he had
lived at Bath, the next fourteen were as productive of
noble efforts and assured success.
He first took rooms in Oxford Street, or, as it was
then called, the Oxford Road, but he soon migrated to
Pall Mall, then as now the centre of the fashionable world,
with the Palace of St. James's at one end of it and the
new Palace of Carlton House, soon to be occupied by the
heir to the throne, at the other. The house in Pall Mall,
of which Gainsborough took one wing, was, and still is,
known as Schomberg House, standing cheek by jowl
with the great block built by Wren, in which the indomit-
able Sarah Jennings Duchess of Marlborough, had lived,
and where she died thirty years before Gainsborough's
occupation of the neighbouring house.
Schomberg House takes its Dutch name from Frederic
Armand Schomberg, a French duke and Field-Marshal,
69
70 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
who had fought both under the tricolour of Holland and
the lilies of France. He was one of the favourites of
William the Third, and it was while fighting with his
royal master at the Battle of the Boyne that he was killed
by a cannon-ball whilst leading his regiment across the
river ; in Benjamin West's well-known picture of that
battle Schomberg is seen in the foreground in the throes
of death. When first built, Schomberg House stood front-
ing a double row of elm trees, and at the back were
spacious gardens. These had been laid out by the famous
garden-architect Kent, for the Lord Burlington who built
Burlington House and the Palladian Villa at Chiswick ;
they were profusely ornamented with bowers and grottoes,
statues, busts and terraces ; there was even a cascade in
them and a bathing-place. These Armidean Gardens
continued from those of old Carlton House to those of
the Duke of Marlborough, and beyond to the parterre of
St. James's Palace; they are now covered by the houses
of Carlton House Terrace and Gardens. Whilst Prince
Regent, George the Fourth had the excellent idea of
connecting Carlton House, Marlborough House and St.
James's Palace by a gallery in which portraits of the
English sovereigns and historical British personages
should be placed. Unfortunately the architect Nash, of
Regent Street and stucco fame, bought Carlton House
and its gardens, and covered the ground they had occupied
with buildings, and the structure which might eventually
have developed into a National Gallery worthy of the
capital of Great Britain, which the present National
Gallery can scarcely be said to be, was absorbed with
the rest.
Fourteen years before Gainsborough took up his resid-
ence in Schomberg House the Duke of Cumberland,
Hyat photo\
SCHOMBERG HOUSE
GAINSBOROUGH'S RESIDENCE IN PALL MALL
LONDON 71
known as " the Butcher " to the Jacobites and " the Hero
of Culloden " to the Hanoverians, had died there, after
which it was bought by John Astley, known as " Beau
Astley." He had been a fellow-pupil of Sir Joshua's in
Rome, and was then so poor that he had made use of
some of his canvases as articles of clothing. But since the
Roman days "the Beau" had come into at least one
fortune. He had married a rich widow, who died soon
after becoming Mrs. Astley, leaving her husband all her
money. Astley had divided Schomberg House into three
portions, occupying the central part himself. This, after
his death, was taken by the greatest of miniature painters
of the time, Richard Cosway, and here he and his clever
and attractive wife, Maria Hadfield, who was also a
good artist, entertained the Prince of Wales and the less
disreputable of his friends. Here they gave that form
of entertainment which someone has truly described as
" those splendid nuisances called evening parties ; " and
here " the charming Mrs. Cosway," as she was always de-
signated, received all the lions and the lionesses of the
season. Among her women friends were the sculptress
Mrs. Darner, Lady Ailesbury and Lady Townshend ; and
among her men friends, Paoli and Lord Erskine. The
Prince of Wales, to whom Cosway was miniature painter,
was a frequent visitor.
On the roof of the house Astley had built a large
painting-room, which he called his country house, because
of the view it gave over St. James's Park to the wooded
slopes of Sydenham on the horizon. He had built a secret
staircase up to this chamber, which also communicated
with some other rooms. Gainsborough occupied the west
wing of Schomberg House, which is little changed ex-
ternally from what it was in the days of his occupation.
72 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
The basso-relievo of a seated female figure, emblematical
of painting, which still adorns the entablature above the
central doorway, was placed there by Astley as were
probably also the caryatidal figures supporting the portico
over what was formerly the principal entrance. Schom-
berg House now forms a portion of the War Office, and
nothing remains in the interior of the building as when
Gainsborough lived within its old red -brick walls. The
east wing has been pulled down, but the central portion
and the west wing remain exactly as they were ; it is one
of the oldest and most interesting houses in Pall Mall,
and if Gainsborough were to revisit that thoroughfare he
could not fail to recognize his old London home, although
new clubs and houses have risen all round it. For his por-
tion of Schomberg House Gainsborough paid a rental of
three hundred pounds a year, a very large sum even for a
house in Pall Mall in those days, and it goes to show how
successful he was in his profession, indeed, next to Sir
Joshua, Gainsborough held the foremost place in London
as a painter. Great ladies, churchmen, statesmen, famous
soldiers and sailors, lawyers, actors and actresses — if they
were successful — all these were amongst his sitters, and
his studio was as thronged by those who made the
history in the middle decades of the eighteenth century
as had been the case at Bath.
There was a tradition that he painted some landscapes
on the walls of his London home, and in 1857, when part
of Schomberg House was connected with one of the
Government buildings these paintings were discovered,
black and begrimed with London dirt, soot and smoke.
The canvases were removed from the plaster in which
they had been placed, and were then found to be painted
in oil: they were imaginary landscapes. Originally there
[Collection of Arthur Kay, Es
THE WOODCUTTERS
V^ FINISHED SKETCH, SHOWING GAINSBOROUGH'S METHOD OF PAINTING IN OIL
OVER BLACK CHALK SHADING
LONDON 73
had been four of these paintings but one of them had
been destroyed in the days of the window tax when an
alteration had been made in the windows of the house.
Of the three that were preserved two were re-lined and
restored. One represented a mountainous country with
water in the foreground, a waterfall falling over some
cliffs into a pool below: the other was of a more pastoral
character pervaded throughout with a mellow golden
tone flecked with clouds. These pictures were evidently
intended by Gainsborough as purely decorative work,
and it is much to be regretted that there is no clue to
their history after being restored, or to their present
whereabouts.
Another inmate of Schomberg House, and that during
Gainsborough's tenancy of the west wing, was a Dr.
Graham, a notorious quack who took rooms there in
1781. With him came a very beautiful young woman
who was sometimes called Miss Hart, and sometimes
Miss Lyon — this beautiful young person whose Christian
name was Emma, ultimately became the celebrated Lady
Hamilton, the model and inspirer of Romney's finest
paintings, and the devoted friend of Nelson. Graham
was the son of a saddler, and was born in Edinburgh
where he studied medicine and took that city's medical
degree. He went to America where he posed as a
philanthropic curer of all the fleshly ills of his fellow-
mortals. He returned to England with the reputation
of an almost miraculous healer, and in 1779 opened his
" Temple of Health " in the Adelphi. He was handsome,
insinuating, and a perfect charlatan, and all the ladies
were attracted by the good-looking young doctor who
could effect such wonderful cures. His " Temple of
Health" was removed to Schomberg House in 1781
74 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
and with it came the incomparable Emma Hart, or, as
she was called in Graham's advertisements, the " lovely
Hebe Vestina, the rosy Goddess of Health." There were
other things to be seen besides Emma, by paying for
them. Graham fitted up his rooms to look like something
in the Alhambra ; or a scene out of Aladdin's palace.
" The enchanting glory of these scenes," as he described
it, commenced at seven in the evening and "died away"
about ten o'clock, during which time " oriental odours and
ethereal essences and dulcet strains perfumed and made
musical the air."
In 1784 Graham with his " Temple of Health " and its
accessories suddenly disappeared. Emma Hart's engage-
ment with this rare quack had ceased long before. No
quack ever had such a splendid advertisement as the
beautiful Emma, and being so near a neighbour one
would have thought that perhaps Gainsborough would
have come under the spell of her beauty, and that its
influence would be noticeable in some of his pictures.
But no portrait of her by him is known to exist unless
she sat to him as the beautiful nymph Musidora, bathing
" her fervent limbs in the refreshing stream," now in the
National Gallery. It might well be the form of the lady
whom Romney called "the divine." Just as there are
only two sea views painted by Gainsborough in existence,
his paintings from the nude are equally rare, the only
ones known to me being the Musidora, and a beautiful
but unfinished sketch in oils of Diana and her nymphs
surprised by Actaeon whilst bathing, which is at Windsor.
A very plausible reason would account for there being
no portrait of Lady Hamilton by Gainsborough, and that
is the probability of Mrs. Gainsborough not allowing
him to paint the fair Emma. That some famous painter's
Ha ifstdngl photo} [National Portrait Gallery of Scotland
THE HON. MRS. GRAHAM
[Collection of the Earl of Northbrook
THE HOUSEMAID
THE HOUSEMAID
FEOM THE LITHOGRAPH BY RICHARD LANE, AFTER THE ORIGINAL DRAWING
IN THE POSSESSION OF THE EARL OF NORTHBROOK
LONDON 75
wives have been jealous of their husbands is, I believe, not
an unknown fact, and if Mrs. Gainsborough had any
jealousy in her character — and what woman who loves
her husband has not — one can quite understand that she
would object to such a siren as Emma Hart coming to
be painted, either in the classical costume she wore in
Graham's " Temple of Health," or without it. Be the
reason what it may he certainly did not paint Lady
Hamilton's portrait, which is singular, seeing that not
only did Romney paint her constantly, but Sir Joshua,
Lawrence and many other artists followed his example,
to their " great content " as Samuel Pepys would say.
Although we have no portrait of Emma, Lady Hamilton
from Gainsborough's brush, we have more than one by
him of a woman equally beautiful, but of a totally differ-
ent type of beauty. This was Mary Cathcart, daughter
of Lord Cathcart, who married Thomas Graham of
Balgowan, afterwards Lord Lynedoch, a distinguished
officer, who was one of Wellington's most able captains
in the Peninsular War. In her Gainsborough seems to
have found the type of womanly beauty that he most
admired, for not only did he paint that superb life-size
and full-length portrait which is the gem of the National
Gallery of Edinburgh, but he repeated her face in several
other portraits, and in one of his most delightful unfinished
works, the portrait of the so-called Housemaid^ at Castle
Howard, in which we find Mrs. Graham's lovely features
under the pretty cotton cap of a maid, standing at a
cottage door, broom in hand.
There is a pathetic story attached to the portrait of
Mrs. Graham in the Scottish National Gallery at Edin-
burgh. When she sat to Gainsborough she was nineteen
years old and had just returned from her honeymoon,
76 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
which had been passed upon the Continent. She died
when only thirty-five, after a marriage of such unclouded
happiness that her heartbroken husband could not bear
to look upon Gainsborough's life-like portrait of her as a
bride. He consequently had it bricked up at one end of
the drawing-room in which it hung, and there it remained,
forgotten until half a century later, when some alterations
being made in the room it was disclosed as fresh, perfect,
and as brilliant as on the last day when the great painter
passed his magic brush over it.
This portrait was bequeathed to the Scottish National
Gallery by Mr. Graham of Redgorton; and the public
had their first view of its incomparable loveliness at the
Manchester Exhibition in 1857. Since this beautiful
work became national property few of Gainsborough's
paintings have had such a popular vogue: it has been
engraved, etched, copied and photographed times beyond
number. Nor is its popularity a matter of surprise. If
one were asked to give one's opinion as to which was the
typical work of Gainsborough's genius, I for one, would
give mine in favour of this portrait of Mary Graham, for
it combines in the intensely high-bred look of this
beautiful young creature in her shimmering silks, her
exquisite features, and even in the plume of ostrich
feathers in her hair, all the artist's finest qualities of
distinction in portraiture and beauty of colouring.
The unfinished life-size portrait of Mrs. Graham at
Castle Howard is said to have been seen in its uncom-
pleted state by the fifth Earl of Carlisle, who was so de-
lighted with it that he would not hear of the artist putting
another stroke upon it, and purchased it upon the spot.
It is a most interesting painting, for it shows the manner
in which Gainsborough " laid in " his figures, and the
[Castle Howard
THE HOUSEMAID
I
#/ ^l&tLC
LONDON 77
vigorous brushwork. Some of the accessories are painted
in Vandyke brown, the only colour besides being a few
touches of carmine in the cheeks and on the lips, but
the small amount of actual performance compared with
the immense effect of beauty is amazing, and, to the artist,
makes this unfinished picture one of Gainsborough's most
interesting works. It is seven feet ten inches long, by four
feet eleven inches wide. In the portrait of Mrs. Graham
at Edinburgh the dress has been more elaborately painted
than is usually the case in most of Gainsborough's por-
traits of women. The upper portion is creamy white, con-
trasting very happily with the pale mulberry skirt, and
this again stands out in contrast with a group of massive
foliage against a somewhat lurid sky. Gainsborough, after
painting Mrs. Graham, seems to have been ever haunted
by her beautiful, sad, young face, for in addition to her
many portraits he introduced her in the guise of a peasant
into several of his landscapes.
Another strikingly fine portrait is the one known as
The Blue Boy, at Grosvenor House, which has all the
glamour and charm of a portrait of a fairy prince. But the
original was young Jonathan Buttall, the son of a reputed
immensely rich ironmonger in Greek Street, Soho. After
his father's death young Buttall continued the business;
but in 1796 his pictures, of which he seems to have had
a great number, were sold, and no more was ever heard
of him. However, he has been immortalized by this
painting, which in some respects is the finest portrait
ever painted by an Englishman. It dates probably to the
year 1779, and traditionally is said to have been painted
by Gainsborough to confute the dictum given by Sir
Joshua Reynolds in his eighth "Discourse," in which
the President said : " Although it is not my business to
78 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
enter into the detail of our art, yet I must take this
opportunity of mentioning one of the means of producing
that great effect which we observe in the works of the
Venetian painters, as I think it is not generally known or
observed. It ought, in rny opinion, to be indispensably
observed, that the masses of light in a picture be always of
a warm, mellow colour, yellow, red, or a yellowish white,
and that the blue, the grey, or the green colours be kept
almost entirely out of these masses, and be used only to
support or set off these warm colours ; and for this pur-
pose, a small proportion of cold colour will be sufficient.
Let this conduct be reversed ; let the light be cold, and
the surrounding colour warm, as we often see in the works
of the Roman and Florentine painters, and it will be out
of the power of art, even in the hands of Rubens and
Titian, to make a picture splendid and harmonious."
In the portrait of young Buttall, and also in that of
Mrs. Siddons in the National Gallery, it will be seen that
Gainsborough has absolutely traversed this opinion, and
has created two consummate works of art in which blue
is the predominant colour, in which the light was cold
and "the surrounding colour warm." In the case of The
Blue Boy the artist introduced into the background of the
picture a mass of deep rich brown which harmonizes
admirably with the blue of the costume. But in both
pictures the blue has many tones, varying from the deepest
hue of lapis lazuli to the palest turquoise.
Although there can be little doubt that The Blue Boy
at Grosvenor House is the original, replicas of it exist.
It is supposed at one time to have been in the possession
of Hoppner in trust on behalf of the Prince of Wales, to
whom it may have belonged, for there is a letter extant,
written by Hoppner's son, in which he says he remem-
[Collection of the Duke of Westminster at Grosvenor House
MASTER BUTT ALL
(THE BLUE BOY)
LONDON 79
bered seeing the picture at their house in Charles Street,
St. James's, and that it then belonged to the Prince. The
picture was bought early in the last century by the then
Earl Grosvenor.
Gainsborough also painted a Pink Boy> the portrait of
a younger-looking boy than Jonathan Buttall, called
Nicholls, who was a grandson of the famous Dr. Mead.
Formerly it was at Waddesdon, but is now the property
of the Baroness de Rothschild, and is in Paris.
The Blue Boy hangs almost opposite to Sir Joshua
Reynolds's portrait of Mrs. Siddons as The Tragic Muse,
at Grosvenor House. There are no finer examples of
the genius of our two greatest portrait painters which
were so essentially different; and the supreme qualities
of each are the more easily discernible because of this
juxtaposition.
Sir Joshua Reynolds is supposed to have called upon
Gainsborough soon after he settled at Schomberg House,
but the President's visit was not returned, and these two
great artists remained comparative strangers until near
the end of Gainsborough's life. There was some talk of
Gainsborough's painting the President's portrait, but al-
though Reynolds sat once, the sitting was not repeated,
owing to Sir Joshua being seized with a slight paralytic
attack which sent him to Bath for the cure. On his return
to London he sent word to Gainsborough announcing
his convalescence, with a view to resuming the sittings ;
the latter merely returned an answer saying he was glad
to hear that the President's health was restored, but he
made no allusion to the portrait. And it was not until the
fatal month of July, 1788, that the two artists met again
— and for the last time.
Four years passed after Gainsborough had settled at
8o THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
Schomberg House before he again sent pictures to the
exhibition of the Royal Academy. In the meantime he
had been on several occasions to Buckingham House, as
Buckingham Palace was then called, to paint King George
and Queen Charlotte and their children. His first por-
traits of any members of the royal family were those of
the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland. The latter was
the beautiful Anne Luttrell, and the widow of Mr. Horton,
and her marriage with his brother Henry displeased
George III. so deeply that it led to the Royal Marriage
Act, which made marriage illegal between princes of the
blood royal and subjects without the sovereign's consent.
Gainsborough painted the Duchess several times, as well
as her first and second husbands. All the portraits are
beautiful, but the most beautiful is the one at Bucking-
ham Palace, in which the Duke and Duchess are walking
arm in arm in Kensington Gardens, with the Duchess's
sister, Elizabeth, seated in the background. There is also
a superb full-length of the Duchess at Buckingham Palace
in full Court dress, and a third, an unfinished life-size
half-length, at Windsor. Her sister, who looks so demure
in Gainsborough's picture, very much belied her appear-
ance. She was a notorious gambler, and, like so many
women gamblers, cheated at cards; she ended in utter
ruin and disgrace, and being unable to remain in England
went to Germany, where she was convicted of picking
pockets and thrown into prison. At Augsburg she was
compelled to clean the streets chained like a dog to a
barrow — so says Fitzpatrick, a chronicler of the scandals
of the day ; but as he was often inaccurate, one may hope
that the ugly story was not true.
Gainsborough painted the royal children at Bucking-
ham House, that set of oval-shaped, kit-cat portraits now
[Collection ofH.M. the King, Windsor Castle
THE DUCHESS OF CUMBERLAND
{Collection of H.R.H. the Dnke of Cambridge, K.G.
ANNE LUTTERELL, DUCHESS OF CUMBERLAND
LONDON 81
at Windsor, and seems to have had a real enthusiasm for
the beauty of the princes and princesses. " Talk of the
Greeks," he said, " pale-faced, long-nosed ghosts ! " — it is
well to remember for the sake of our painter's reputation
that probably he had never seen a fine Greek statue in his
life — " Look at the living delectable countenances in the
royal progeny. Talk of old Dame Cornelia, the mother
of the Gracchi, sir, here you behold half a score of youth-
ful divinities ! " A man who could call George the Third
" the morning star of England," and transfigure the more
than plain Queen Charlotte into, if not a beautiful, at any
rate a very pleasing-looking middle-aged lady, was cap-
able of a great deal ; but one cannot go so far, by the light
of other history and other statements, to believe what
Gainsborough declared to be a fact, that King George was
not only a first-rate connoisseur in matters of art, but that
he uttered more and better jeux de mots than any other
person (of rank) that the painter had ever met. Perhaps
the " of rank " saves the statement from being entirely
fulsome flattery.
The artist related that upon one occasion he told the
King that painters should be employed to design the
fashions for women's dress, to which his Majesty replied :
" You are right, Mr. Gainsborough. Why do not you and
Sir Joshua set about it, hey? But," added the King, "the
ladies are beautiful enough as it is — what! Hey, Gains-
borough, hey, hey?" "Like a saucy fellow as I am,"
continues Gainsborough, " I said, ' Yes, and please your
Majesty, it were as well to leave the dowdy angels alone.'"
Gainsborough's success with his portraits of the House
of Guelph was immense, and he succeeded in making all
the members of it who sat to him interesting, if not
beautiful ; even the Duke of Cumberland, who was con-
82 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
sidered by all who knew him to be the very reverse of all
that is considered to be a gentleman. But his tours de
force were his portraits of Queen Charlotte, whom he
painted several times. In 1781 he exhibited a whole
length life-size of George the Third in his blue morning
uniform, and one of the Queen in white satin and gold ;
these are amongst the finest portraits in Buckingham
Palace. Unlike Reynolds, he was persona grata at Court,
and painted every one of the royal children, with the
exception of the Duke of York, Princess Augusta is
reported to have said that Gainsborough was " a great
favourite with all the royal family," and told the follow-
ing anecdote. The artist was at Windsor at the time of
the death of one of the little princes, and was engaged to
paint the dead child. The next day the King, passing
the room in which Gainsborough was at work sketching
the features of the dead prince, only saw his back, and
passing on sent a page to request Gainsborough not to
paint on that day. The page gave the message, and re-
turning to the King told him the nature of the painter's
occupation. George the Third said no more, and Gains-
borough finished the portrait.
Whilst painting all these royal and other sitters,
Gainsborough found time to pay occasional visits to his
brother Humphrey, the minister, at Henley. Humphrey
died in 1776, his model of the steam engine, which he
had given to Thicknesse, eventually finding its way to the
British Museum, where it may be still.
Compared with that of Reynolds, we know but little of
Gainsborough's home life. He never wrote a letter if he
could possibly avoid doing so, and kept no record of the
passing of his days, not even a list of his sitters. He lived
entirely in the society of his family and in that of a
Hanfs'angl photo\
{.Collection of H.M, the King, Windsor Castle
QUEEN CHARLOTTE
Han/, tangl photo ]
{Collection ofH.M. the King, Windsor Castle
GEORGE III.
HanJ.tiiHgl photo} [Collection of H.M. the King, Windsor Castle
GEORGE, PRINCE OF WALES
Thomsoi photo} {Collection of Miss Alice Rothschild
GEORGE, PRINCE OF WALES
LONDON 83
few friends, for the most part professional or amateur
musicians, and seems to have seen very little of any of
his fellow-artists, or of anyone connected with his pro-
fession.
In the autumn of 1777 Mrs. Gainsborough and her
children paid a visit to Suffolk. Writing at the time to
a friend, Gainsborough says : " My family had a great
desire to make a journey to Ipswich to Mr. and Mrs.
Kilderbee's for a fortnight, and last Sunday morning I
packed them off in their own coach with David on horse-
back; and Molly wrote to let me know that they arrived
very safe — but somehow or other they seemed desirous
of returning sooner than the proposed time, as they
desire me to go for them next Tuesday ; the bargain was
that I should fetch them home. I don't know what 's the
matter ; either people don't pay them honour enough for
ladies that keep a coach, or else madam is afraid to trust
me alone in this great town."
Soon after this was written we hear that Gainsborough
got rid of the " family coach." According to Fulcher the
artist was too proud to be seen using a public convey-
ance, and the " chaise was not allowed to drive up to the
door " of Schomberg House. Thicknesse, who invariably
infers something disagreeable when writing about Mrs.
Gainsborough, attributes her husband's concealing his
use of a hackney carriage to her parsimony. Gains-
borough, he writes, " was obliged to be set down in St.
James's Square, or out of sight of his own windows, for
fear of another set down, not so convenient either to his
head or his heels, as riding out twelve pennyworth of
coach hire after having earned fifty guineas previous
thereto."
In that same year Gainsborough's finest full-length
84 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
portrait was that of the musician, Karl Frederick Abel,
who was one of the painter's principal cronies. Abel
came from Germany to London in 1759, and speedily
became famous for his musical talent and execution upon
many instruments, but especially for his playing upon the
one Gainsborough loved so well, the viol-di-gamba. Abel
was appointed " Chamber Musician " to the Queen, and
composed many popular airs; he died in 1787. This
portrait was in the Academy of 1777, when Horace
Walpole described it as being " very like and well." He
was painted at least twice by his artist-friend, who also
painted the musician's dogs, a beautiful white Pome-
ranian with its puppy; the same dog is seen stretched
out half asleep under the table on which his master is
writing in the portrait, which is one of Gainsborough's
happiest successes. By the expression upon the Ger-
man's shrewd, clever face, he seems to be pausing for a
happy turn to some fresh bars of music for the viol-di-
gamba that he seems to have just set down and is rest-
ing across his thigh. The details of the picture— the big
viol-di-gamba with its glowing wood, the paper, and even
the snuff-box on which the musician's left hand is lightly
laid — all are painted with minute finish, yet without
being over-elaborated. One feels that in his portraits
of his musical friends, in this of Abel and in that of
Fischer, formerly at Hampton Court, Gainsborough
painted, as the Italians call it, ".with love," and in both
he has given the very mind of his sitters ; and as with
that of Garrick at Stratford-on Avon, the soul of each is
caught and shines forth from the eyes on the canvas.
The viol-di-gamba is as true to actuality as the musical in-
strument in Holbein's great picture of The Ambassadors
in the National Gallery — it was this viol-di-gamba which
\Formerly in the possession of Mr. Wertheimer
CHARLES FREDERICK ABEL
LONDON 85
the painter Jackson said that Gainsborough would con-
template in rapt attention for minutes together. The
artist showered sketches upon Abel in recompense for
the latter's musical performances. Henry Angelo, the
great master of fence, frequently refers in his " Remin-
iscences" to Abel and Gainsborough being constantly to-
gether, and how Abel's walls were literally covered with
Gainsborough's drawings. These were sold after the mu-
sician's death at Longford's auction rooms.
To the same exhibition as that in which the full-length
portrait of Abel was shown, Gainsborough also sent one
of his large landscapes, but unfortunately the subject
is not known. Walpole writes of it that "it is in the
style of Rubens, and by far the finest landscape ever
painted in England, and equal to the great masters."
Praise like this from the critical master of Strawberry
Hill is praise indeed ; of another landscape he says :
" What frankness of nature in Gainsborough's landscapes,
which entitle them to rank in the noblest collection."
Gainsborough, however, had one severe critic in a fellow-
Academician — that eccentric and somewhat malevolent
painter, Henry Fuseli, a Swiss, who in his lifetime
enjoyed the reputation of being one of the first painters
of the so-called "grand style," but whose somewhat
ghastly and macabre works are now relegated to attics
and cellars. For some unknown reason Fuseli hated
Gainsborough, and when editing a new edition of
Pilkington's " Dictionary of Painters " professed not to
know Gainsborough's Christian name. He also wrote:
" Posterity will judge whether the name of Gainsborough
deserves to be ranked with those of Vandyke, Rubens,
and Claude." Posterity has judged, and Gainsborough's
name ranks with that triumvirate, both as a portrait and
86 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
a landscape painter, and it is therefore additionally to be
regretted that " the penury of contemporary biography,"
as Allan Cunningham has truly expressed it, tells us so
little of his life, beyond the meagre details which have
been noted.
One would give much for some account of the painter's
daily life, " the common round," in Pall Mall, or to possess
even some notes of his sitters at Schomberg House, either
regarding his manner of painting and the arrangement
of accessories, or the impression made by his personality
on the sitters. Cunningham says that, like Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Gainsborough painted his portraits standing
in front of his easel. But this is the usual manner of
portrait painters, and in this respect Gainsborough may
be said to resemble every painter. He had, however, one
peculiarity entirely his own ; he used brushes which were
stuck in " shafts sometimes two yards long," and stood
as far away from his sitters as from the canvas on which
he was painting, in order to obtain, as nearly as possible,
the same effect on the canvas as he himself did of his
model. He rose early, beginning to work between nine
and ten o'clock, and remained in front of his easel until
two or three o'clock in the afternoon : his work for the
day finished, he generally played on one of his beloved
violins or listened to his friends making music ; occasion-
ally he went out to pay visits. After dinner, which was
probably about six o'clock, Gainsborough loved to sit by
his wife's side; and whilst music was being played, or
some one read aloud, he would work away at those
delightful sketches of landscapes or figures in different
coloured chalks — red, white, blue or black. When a
sketch was finished he would toss it under the table and
commence another, only keeping, at the end of the
COTTAGE CHILDREN
LONDON 87
evening, those he considered the best : these studies he
used for his larger landscapes, painted in oils. During
the summer he took lodgings at Hampstead or Richmond,
where the open country and fine views, and in the latter
place the reaches of the Thames, would inspire him with
fresh subjects for his brush. Thus passed away a busy,
harmless, happy existence. His was the most enviable
of natures — the easily pleased and seldom bored. The
simplest object, if he thought it in any way beautiful or
artistic, gave him infinite pleasure — a well-written letter,
the polish upon a musical instrument, or a piece of
glistening silk. Smith in his Life of the sculptor Nollekens
tells us how he found Gainsborough one day listening to
a Colonel Hamilton, who was playing superbly on the
violin. " Go on ! " cried Gainsborough, " and I will give
you the picture of the Boy at the Stile, which you have
so often wished to purchase." The tears, writes Smith,
stood in the painter's eyes as he listened to the music,
and when it ceased a coach was called, in which the lucky
Colonel placed the painting he had so long coveted and
so easily acquired, and drove away with it. This story
paints Gainsborough to the life, and is like one of his
own admirable portraits — the enthusiastic devotee of all
that is great and refined in art, with an inborn generosity
equal to his own genius; a most lovable character, a man
born to be envied and admired.
I have not succeeded in tracing this " picture of the
Boy at the Stile " which Colonel Hamilton carried away.
It belonged to that class of the artist's works — his
paintings of English peasant children — which are more
beautiful than Murillo's Spanish children, if not as true.
Of Gainsborough's pictures of boys, that of Jonathan
Buttall takes the first place; but personally, had I the
88 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
choice between this and that of the cottager's child
carrying a jug of milk and a puppy, which was exhibited
at the Guildhall in 1902, 1 think I would choose the latter.
Of this Leslie writes in his admirable " Handbook for
Young Painters," a book which all young painters should
get and study, " that it is unequalled by anything of the
kind in the world "; and he goes on to say that this little
girl is the same one as the one who appears in the picture
of the Girl with Pigs, which was bought by Sir Joshua
Reynolds and afterwards by the fifth Earl of Carlisle,
and which was one of the greatest treasures of the
collection at Castle Howard, The fortunate owner of
the Cottage Girl is Mr. A. F. Basset of Ichedy, Cornwall.
Gainsborough painted several pictures of a little girl
watching a litter of tiny pigs drinking out of an earthen-
ware platter; in one all the pigs are ranged round the
basin, and lap their milk discreetly, but in another one
of the little animals has a hoof as well as his snout in
the milk. This very natural trait is said to have been
suggested to Gainsborough by overhearing a farmer
criticizing the picture, the one for which Sir Joshua
Reynolds gave him one hundred guineas, although only
sixty were put upon it when it hung at the Academy ex-
hibition. " They be deadly like pigs, but nobody ever saw
pigs feeding together but one on 'em had a foot in the
trough." On hearing the opinion of one so versed in pig
nature and habits, Gainsborough painted the replica in
which the pig has his "foot in the trough." Fischer's
mezzotint gives the second version of the painting.
Another picture of this class represented a woodman
caught in a thunderstorm He gazes upward with a
frightened expression at the tumult in the sky. This
painting excited George the Third's admiration, but it
GIRL AND PIGS
FROM THE MEZZOTINT BY W. DICKENSON
LONDON 89
was not sold until after the artist's death, when it was
bought by Lord Gainsborough : unfortunately it was
burnt in a fire at Eaton Park. To judge by the litho-
graph taken of the picture by Gainsborough's nephew
Lane, it must have been a very remarkable work ; the
terror of the woodman with his dog crouching at his
feet, and looking up at his master for protection, is full
of dramatic power. An even finer work with a similar
subject was one called The Shepherd's Boy in the Storm.
In Northcott's opinion it was even finer than The Wood-
man> and Hazlitt wrote of it: " What a truth and beauty
in these; he (the shepherd boy) stands with his arms
clasped, looking up with a mixture of timidity and resig-
nation, eyeing a magpie chattering over his head ; while
the wind is rustling in the branches. It is like a vision
breathed upon the canvas." There are a large number of
such works as these in which children are introduced.
In one called Interior of a Cottage, two children are
standing before a fire with outstretched hands to the
blaze, whilst another is seated eating out of a porringer,
a cat looking greedily on from the chimney corner — a
painting, alas! that has disappeared and is only known
by the mezzotint of it by Charles Turner. There is also
another, similar again to the last, called The Little
Cottagers, in which a child stands by a paling, which is
now only known by the engraving.
Gainsborough was fond of introducing cottage children
to give life and animation to his landscapes and rustic
views of Suffolk, as in that most beautiful painting at
Grosvenor House known by the name of The Cottage
Door. There are others full of stress and of movement,
as for instance that in which some dogs are fighting whilst
their master is trying to separate them. The dogs are
90 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
painted with all the vigour of one of Snyder's wolf-hounds,
and one is not surprised to learn that Gainsborough was
a great admirer of that artist, of whose paintings he had
several at Schomberg House. The original of this picture
is at Lord Tollemache's, but a fine mezzotint of it was
done by Henry Birche. Gainsborough painted a replica
of the work.
In some respects one prefers Gainsborough's children
of the people to those of Sir Joshua Reynolds, beautiful
as Reynolds's children are, for in actual truth to nature
Gainsborough bears away the palm. I know of none of
Reynolds's pictures of children that I would choose in
preference to the little peasant maid carrying her puppy
and milk-jug, which has already been noticed, not even
the President's Strawberry Girl at Hertford House, or
Master Bunbury at Barton.
A favourite model of Gainsborough's was a very hand-
some lad called Jack Hill, whom he had met at Richmond,
and he figures in many of the artist's later works. So
taken was Gainsborough by the boy's striking beauty
and his possibilities as a model, that he took him back to
Schomberg House and added him to his establishment.
Jack Hill belonged to a tribe of gipsies. " Molly," Gains-
borough's daughter, was as much taken by Master Jack's
good looks as was her father, and the whole family
seemed to have combined to make a pet of him, with the
result that he became thoroughly spoilt and gave much
trouble. After running away several times, he fell ill and
was sent by Mrs. Gainsborough to Christ's Hospital, and
there we lose sight of him. But the lad's handsome,
swarthy face endures in many of Gainsborough's most
delightful pictures of peasant life.
The only event of importance in the tranquil lives led
£tiss i kotd\
{Collection of the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir
THE WOODCUTTER'S HOME
LONDON 91
by the Gainsboroughs in Pall Mall was the marriage of
their younger daughter with the artist's old friend of Bath
days, the musician Fischer. The marriage was made al-
most secretly, and entirely in opposition to the wishes of
the parents. Johann Christian Fischer, who was famous for
his playing upon the hautbois, had met and seen much
of the Gainsboroughs when they were living at Bath, and
probably followed them to London after they had settled
there. In 1780 he and Molly Gainsborough were married,
little to the father's liking, as the following letter, written
to his sister early that year, will show : " Dear sister," he
writes, " I imagine you are no stranger to the alteration
which has taken place in my family. The notice I had of it
was very sudden, as I had not the least suspicion of the
attachment being so long and deeply seated ; and as it
was too late for me to alter anything, without being the
cause of total unhappiness on both sides, my consent,
which it was a mere compliment to affect to ask, I needs
must give: whether such a match was agreeable to me
or not, I would not have the cause of unhappiness lie
upon my conscience, and accordingly they were married
last Monday, and are settled for the present in a ready-
furnished little house in Curzon Street, May Fair. I can't
say I have any reason to doubt the man's honesty or
goodness of heart, as I never heard anyone speak amiss
of him ; and as to his oddities and temper, she must learn
to like them as she likes his person, for nothing can be
altered now. I pray God she may be happy with him,
and have her health. Peggy has been very unhappy about
it; and I endeavour to comfort her, in hope that she will
have more pride and goodness than to do anything with-
out first asking my advice and approbation. We shall see
how they go on, and I shall write to you further upon the
92 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
subject. I hope you are well, and with best wishes, I
remain Your affectionate bro: Thos: Gainsborough."
Fischer died in 1800, twenty-six years before his wife,
who went out of her mind. One of her hallucinations was
that the Prince of Wales was deeply in love with her, and
at her death she bequeathed Gainsborough's portrait of
her husband, painted at Bath, to the Prince, then become
George the Fourth. This was one of the best of the
modern English portraits at Hampton Court, but now it is
no longer kept there. Gainsborough represented his future
son-in-law standing by the side of a spinet, apparently
in act of composing music, for he gazes upward as if
seeking inspiration. In front of him is an open music-
book and an oboe, one of those instruments which
Gainsborough loved ; a violin is placed on a chair, and
Fischer wears a coat of crimson velvet. This fine por-
trait was painted about 1767 or 1768, when Fischer was
a constant visitor at the Gainsboroughs' house in the
Circus.
We have a glimpse of the life at Schomberg House
after the marriage in a book called " Wine and Walnuts,"
said to have been written by an artist named Pyne, which
shows that despite their dislike to the union the Gains-
boroughs kept up kindly and friendly relations with their
daughter and son-in-law. " The two enthusiasts" (Gains-
borough and Fischer), says the book, "sometimes left their
spouses, mamma and daughter, each to sleep away half the
night alone. For one would get at his flageolet, which
he played delightfully, and the other at his viol-di-gamba,
and have such an inveterate set-to that, as Mrs. Gains-
borough said, a gang of robbers might have stripped the
house, and set it on fire to boot, and the gentlemen been
none the wiser." " In truth," said Caleb Whitefoord, " I
Thorns, n photo}
{Collection of Miss Alice Rothschild
COLONEL ST. LEGER
LONDON 93
never met with fellows like these, who lost all reckon-
ing of time when tuning it to their cat-gut and tootle-
too!"
There was also at Hampton Court another full-length
portrait by Gainsborough of Colonel St. Leger, a par-
ticular friend of George the Fourth when Prince of Wales.
This was painted as a pendant to one of the Prince, who,
like St. Leger, appeared in regimentals with a horse by
his side. The two friends exchanged portraits. "Jack"
St. Leger was one of the riotous young rakes about
London when George the Fourth was Prince of Wales.
He was perhaps more wildly extravagant than the other
" bloods " of the Regent's set, and was known as " Hand-
some Jack St. Leger." Born in 1756, he belonged to the
Doneraile family and became Colonel of the Foot Guards
in 1782, soon being promoted to the rank of General
through the influence of his friend the Prince, ultimately
being appointed Commander of the Forces in Ceylon,
where he died in 1799. He is said to have been the
founder of the " Hell-Fire Club," and gave his name to
the St. Leger Stakes at Doncaster. His spirit is still
supposed to haunt his estates in Ireland, where he is
declared to appear in a phantom coach driven by a head-
less coachman and drawn by headless horses, with a
headless footman seated behind him. He was certainly
one of the handsomest rakes of his day, as this portrait
proves ; there is a replica of it at Miss Alice de Roth-
schild's house at Waddesdon. "Jack" St. Leger's portrait
was hung in the Academy in 1782, together with its
companion picture of the Prince of Wales. But the fault
in both portraits is the horse, which is ungainly and
wooden, like all Gainsborough's horses. There is a fine
mezzotint of the St. Leger portrait by Gainsborough's
94 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
nephew Dupont, made in 1783, as well as a recent one
published by Messrs. Graves.
In the Academy of 1783 Gainsborough exhibited eight
portraits, the most important of which, but not the most
successful, being the large group of the Baillie family,
now in the National Gallery. Of this group of extremely
plain-looking persons, Ruskin made the astounding re-
mark in one of his lectures, " It is the best Gainsborough
in England known to me." Surely Ruskin must have
seen Gainborough's Blue Boy, Mrs. Siddons, and many
others of his portraits which had distinction, individuality
and the charm that are so pointedly lacking in this group
of Mr. Baillie with his wife and children, a group that
not even Gainsborough could succeed in making attrac-
tive or interesting. Near the Baillie family hangs a full-
length portrait, by the same hand, of a benign-looking
old gentleman in a thickly-powdered wig, leaning on his
cane. This is Dr. Ralph Schomberg, of the same family
as the Duke of Schomberg. A stately old medico looks
Sir Ralph, in his court suit and cocked hat in hand, and
his gold-mounted, clouded cane — a brilliant contrast to
the Baillie picture.
In the course of that year (1783) Gainsborough paid a
visit to the English lakes with his old Ipswich friend
Kilderbee, who described him as being a delightful travel-
ling companion, as one can easily imagine. Writing to a
Dr. Pearce at Bath from Kew Green, where he had a
little house in the summer, Gainsborough says, " I don't
know if I told you that I am going along with a Suffolk
friend to visit the Lakes of Cumberland and Westmore-
land, and purpose when I am back to shew your Grays
and Dr. Brown (Dr. Brown is said to have been the first
who wrote of the beauties of the Lake country) were
LONDON 95
tawdry fan-painters. I purpose to mount all the lakes at
the next exhibition, in the great style, and you know if
the people don't like them, 'tis only jumping into one of
the deepest of them from a wooded island, and my repu-
tation will be fixed for ever. I took the liberty of send-
ing you a little perry out of Worcestershire, and when
the weather settles in hot again, shall be much obliged if
you and Mrs. P would drink a little of it and fancy
it champagne for my sake." Perhaps the decorative
picture found on the walls of Schomberg House long
after his death were Gainsborough's recollections of this
expedition to the lakes.
In the same year Gainsborough was much interested
by an exhibition organized by a French artist, Philippe
de Loutherbourg, who had settled some dozen years
before in London, and where he remained until his death
in 1812. Loutherbourg had earned a considerable sum
of money and made a deserved reputation by painting,
since he was an admirable artist, and was engaged to
paint the scenery for Drury Lane Theatre. He was
made an R.A. in 1781. His military pictures were also
good, and are still to be seen in some of our royal palaces
and at Greenwich Hospital. The most powerful of his
works is one representing the Great Fire of London as
seen from old London Bridge ; this is at Lord North-
brook's country house. Loutherbourg had painted some
transparencies on glass which were views of English
scenery and country life which were lighted from the back
of the paintings. Gainsborough was so delighted with
these transparencies when he saw them in the French
artist's exhibition that he imitated them. A set of these
transparencies by Gainsborough was for sale a short time
ago in a London art gallery. They were mounted in one
96 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
frame upon a stand and occupied a certain amount of
space, and were interesting rather as being the work of
the painter, than because they were artistic.
Later in the year Gainsborough paid a visit to his
native town in order to give his vote as a Tory, he having
been made a free burgess of Sudbury. He is said to have
made a considerable stir in his old home by his evidently
worldly prosperity. His fellow-townsmen had every
reason to be proud of this son of their soil, but one doubts
whether they had any real conception of the greatness of
the artist to which Sudbury had given birth.
This year of 1784 was one of the most varied and im-
portant in Gainsborough's placid career; in addition to
his journeys and visits, it was marked by his rupture with
the Royal Academy, a portrait group of the three eldest
daughters of George the Third being the immediate
cause. This picture was originally designed for the
Prince of Wales, to be placed in a panel at Carlton
House; it is now at Buckingham Palace. The three prin-
cesses— the Princess Royal, Princess Augusta, and Prin-
cess Elizabeth— are shown half-length, one being seated
whilst the two others are standing. There is a mezzo-
tint of this group by Gainsborough Dupont, published in
1793, which makes the figure full length, but from other
evidence I believe that the original state of the group is
as we now see it — the figures half-length, and Gains-
borough's letter to the Hanging Committee of the
Academy confirms this view. The frame had already
been designed when the group was painted, and Gains-
borough -wished it to be hung on the Academy walls on
exactly the same level as that on which it was to be
placed at Carlton House. But his wish was not complied
with — hence the famous quarrel,
Cfl ^
C/2 «
S s
s I
PH O
PM u,
. o
LONDON 97
On the 23rd of April, 1784, the following account was
published in one of the daily papers: "An event has
taken place which must concern the Fine Arts in this
kingdom. The celebrated Mr. Gainsborough, whose
labours have so much contributed to enrich the Royal
Academy for several seasons past, has been under the
necessity of withdrawing his performances from this
year's exhibition! The occasion of this step, it is said,
was a refusal on the part of the Academical Council to
hang one particular picture in a situation capable of
showing its effect.'3
Gainsborough apparently had some knowledge of the
intention of the Hanging Committee with regard to the
picture, otherwise he would not have sent them this ulti-
matum : " Mr. Gainsborough presents his compliments to
the gentlemen appointed to hang the pictures at the
Royal Academy, and begs leave to hint to them, that if
the Royal Family he has sent for the exhibition (being
smaller than three-quarters) are hung above the line
along with full-lengths, he never more whilst he breathes
will send another picture to the Exhibition. This he
swears by God. Saturday Morning."
The answer of the Academy was to return the group
of the princesses and other pictures that he had sent for
that year's exhibition to Schomberg House, where Gains-
borough had an exhibition on his own account. This was
not however very successful
Gainsborough kept his threat, and never again sent
any of his works to the Academy : the breach between
him and that institution was final. The painting which
caused the quarrel is not one of the great artist's happiest
works, and compared with the group of the Waldegrave
sisters by Sir Joshua Reynolds, seems somewhat artificial
H
98 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
and affected. Reynolds certainly had far more beautiful
models in the Waldegraves than had Gainsborough with
the royal princesses, whose features somewhat recall those
of their excellent mother, Queen Charlotte. Instead of
painting them grouped at some occupation as the three
sisters in Reynolds's lovely composition, the three prin-
cesses have all the air of " sitting," which robs their por-
traits of all ease and spontaneity; the shape of the canvas
also is unfortunate, and is a further drawback to the
beauty of the work. But one of Gainsborough's most
successful portraits, that of Mrs. Siddons, belongs to this
same year. I have already called my reader's attention
to that masterly work. The lovely portrait ot"Perditan
Robinson, with the marvellously life-like Pomeranian at
her feet, belongs to this period of Gainsborough's career,
a period when it may be said to have reached its zenith.
It is amongst the finest paintings in that treasure house
of art, Hertford House. Perdita holds a miniature in her
hand, probably that of her royal and fickle lover Prince
Florizel, who for a time adored her, and then, when he
tired of the poor creature, cast her off like an old shoe.
In this portrait she has a sad expression, as if pro-
phetic of her later life when abandoned by her butterfly
admirer.
Somewhere between 1774 and 1784 Dr. Johnson is
supposed to have given Gainsborough a sitting for his
portrait, and the artist is said to have painted him stick
in hand. If this portrait had come down to us it would
rank amongst the most interesting from Gainsborough's
brush, but there is no trace of such a picture, nor is any
mention made by Boswell of the lexicographer ever
having given a sitting at Schomberg House.
Some time back a small portrait of Dr. Johnson, pur-
Colls photo}
[Wallace Gallery
MRS. ROBINSON AS PERDITA
LONDON 99
porting to be by Gainsborough, since it had his initials
on the frame, was sold at Christies' Sale Rooms. It found
its way to Tunbridge Wells in 1902, when I bought it,
and discovered it to be an admirably painted reduction
of Opie's life-size portrait of Dr. Johnson, belonging to
Lady Wantage. This small replica is now in the National
Portrait Gallery.
Amongst Gainsborough's portraits of statesmen, one
of his latest is a beautiful oval of George Canning, painted
in 1/87, immediately after the future Prime Minister had
left Eton. He wears a Vandyke dress with a deep lace
collar, a costume in which Gainsborough loved to paint his
handsome young men sitters, and George Canning was
one of the handsomest that ever sat to him, with his
finely-cut features, and his long dark-brown hair falling
low on his neck. Accustomed as one is to Canning's
portrait as a bald-headed, prematurely aged man, as he
appears thirty years later when painted by Lawrence, it
is hard to realize that Gainsborough's handsome youth is
one and the same person, and that this long-haired young
cavalier should so soon become a worn-out looking states-
man, with a hairless crown and sunken features — the
cares of office and the weight of governing an empire
account, perhaps, for this rapid transformation.
Among military heroes Gainsborough painted a por-
trait of the first Lord Amherst, now in the National
Portrait Gallery. Amherst was one of England's greatest
soldiers and commanders at a time when there were
giants in the land. He had smelt powder both at Det-
tingen and Fontenoy, and when fifty, carried all before
him in North America. In 1758 he captured Cape Breton,
and Montreal two years later. He was afterwards placed
in command of our army in British North America, and
ioo THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
on his return to England was made Commander-in-Chief.
Yet with all this record no life has ever been written of
the great soldier to whom England owes the Dominion
of Canada. If Lord Amherst had been a Frenchman, and
had he done but half for France of that which he did for
England, he would have found a place by the side of
Lafayette.
There are three hundred portraits conclusively known
to be the work of Gainsborough's hand. Many so-called
Gainsboroughs are by his nephew, Gainsborough Dupont,
and a still greater number by imitators and copyists; the
number of these the astutest of picture dealers cannot
gauge, not even Mr. Algernon Graves himself.
The following notes on the imitators of Gainsborough
were written for me by a friend who is a connoisseur, and
has a wide knowledge of the tricks so often played in the
buying and selling of pictures. They are of interest, and
may perhaps save some would-be purchaser from becom-
ing the possessor of a spurious Gainsborough. With the
increase in value of Gainsborough's work these forgeries
are liable to a corresponding increase, since they purport
to be genuine ; therefore a warning by one so competent
to judge is of great value.
" A great many pictures with Gainsborough's name
attached to them are often by one or other of the following
artists. Some are frankly copied from well-known works ;
others are simply in the manner of the master and
painted under his influence. By far the best of the
imitators is Thomas Barker of Bath (1769-1847). His
landscapes are of the highest artistic merit, and resemble
Gainsborough in their touch to an extent that experts
are frequently deceived. A very favourite trick of
dealers, anxious to depreciate a genuine landscape by
[Christ Church, Oxford
THE HON. WELBORE ELLIS
LONDON 101
Gainsborough in order to obtain it at a low price, is to
attribute it to Barker of Bath. There is, however, a
certain lightness in the drawing of Barker's finest pictures
never visible in Gainsborough, except in very early works,
and these Barker never tried to copy.
"Hoppne^s landscape drawings are often wrongly as-
cribed to Gainsborough by collectors unfamiliar with this
side of Hoppner's art. They are easily distinguished by
the round strokes in the trees in distinction to Gains-
borough's flattening strokes. The composition and motive
are very similar to Gainsborough's and where there are
no figures may lead to mistakes.
" William Edivard Frost (1810-1877), made clever
copies whilst a student at Sass's Academy, of many
pencil drawings by Gainsborough. At Frost's death
these came into the market and were offered for sale as
Gainsboroughs. They are not difficult to detect, for what
is loose and free in Gainsborough's handling becomes
mere weakness with Frost.
" William Jackson of Exeter ( 1 730- 1 803), besides writing
Gainsborough's life painted landscapes in the same style.
These, however, have a good deal of Wilson in them and
are more highly glazed than Gainsborough's work.
" I n portraiture, besides Gainsborough Dupont, Mary
Green (1776-1845), better known as a naturalist, copied
and imitated Gainsborough. Her copies are usually
signed, but when the signature is faint they are offered
in sale rooms as genuine Gainsboroughs. Some pictures,
doubtless executed as replicas of the original for relatives
of owners of the originals, are often shown in all good
faith in country houses as being genuine Gainsboroughs.
"Joshua Kirby (1716-1774), and his son both painted
some of the pictures upon which Gainsborough, no doubt,
102 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
worked himself. In sale rooms and private collections
excellent landscapes ascribed to Gainsborough, are often
by the father or son. The faults are too glaring to accept
the whole picture as a Gainsborough, and where a weak
canvas contains some very brilliant passage which no
imitator seemed capable of executing, it may be taken
as Gainsborough's own touch, and the picture may be
ascribed to one of the Kirbys.
"Genuine landscape and figure studies by Gainsborough
are frequently offered for sale, but so retouched as to be
worth nothing. A favourite modern trick is to heighten
the lights with Chinese white in order to make a sketch
seem more elaborate. Where Gainsborough has left a
face only suggested, a modern forger will elaborate it
with colour, and many of his finest sketches have been
ruined in this way, especially since the rage for his
drawings set in. Where the coloured chalk has been
rubbed or defaced the forger supplies the deficiency,
and it is no uncommon thing to see a sketch fall at an
auction to some dishonest dealer, and to find the same
sketch, elaborated and " faked " offered for sale, and
commanding a far higher price, some months later."
Gainsborough's sketches and studies amount to over
a thousand. Small as is Gainsborough's output when
compared with Reynolds and Romney's number of
portraits, they are almost as various in treatment as
those of the former painter, and infinitely more varied
than those of the latter. And were all Gainsborough's
oil paintings to vanish he would still hold rank as a
consummate artist and as one of the greatest of English
painters by his studies and sketches.
Gainsborough's last years passed very tranquilly. He
had an income of a thousand pounds a year, which he
\Collection of the Rev. E. Gardiner
PORTRAIT STUDY OF A. YOUNG GIRL, PROBABLY DAUGHTER
OF THE ARTIST
LONDON 103
found sufficient for the comfort of his family and for the
provision of his own few wants and hobbies. He was
extremely generous, but had no personal extravagances.
He was as liberal with his fortune as with his pictures,
giving freely of both, without ostentation and seemingly
for the mere love of conferring pleasure on others. In
some respects he carried his generosity too far, as on one
occasion when he gave a lady a score of his matchless
sketches, which the foolish woman at once fastened with
paste to the walls of her sitting-room.
Sir George Beaumont, a great friend of all good
artists, and an artist himself, used to relate that one
evening, when he, Sheridan and Gainsborough were
dining together, Gainsborough was full of his wonted
good-humour and in his usual high spirits. So much did
they enjoy themselves that at parting it was arranged
that the three should soon dine together again, and an
evening was fixed. But when the dinner took place a
great change had come over Gainsborough. He sat
silent, and irresponsive to Sheridan's most brilliant
sallies, with an expression of unwonted and fixed
melancholy on his handsome face. When they were
alone Gainsborough took Sheridan by the hand, and
gazing earnestly into his eyes said, " Now don't laugh,
but listen. I shall die soon — I know it — I feel it — I have
less time to live than my looks infer, but for this I care
not. What oppresses my mind is this — I have many
acquaintances but few friends ; and as I wish to have
one worthy man to accompany me to the grave, I am
desirous of bespeaking you — will you come — aye
or no? "
Sheridan naturally promised to fulfil Gainsborough's
wish, although he treated the matter as a joke. The
104 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
painter's face then lost its miserable expression, and he
became as gay and merry as was his wont, the evening
ending without a further cloud. This dinner took place
probably early in the winter of 1788, and in the month of
February that year the trial of Warren Hastings com-
menced, a trial which roused intense public interest and
which Gainsborough, like everyone else who could pro-
cure a seat, attended. One day during the trial he was
seated by an open window in Westminster Hall when he
felt a sudden shoot of pain accompanied by intense cold
at the back of his neck. On returning home and showing
his neck to his wife and one of his nieces, they found a
hardness under the skin and a swelling of the size of a
shilling which continued to give him great pain, and also
the sensation of cold. A doctor was sent for; two arrived,
Dr. Hebenden and the great surgeon John Hunter. They
declared that the swelling and the cold were produced
by a chill on the glands of the neck which had produced
inflammation, and that in the coming spring the trouble
would cease. Gainsborough then went for a change of air
to his cottage at Richmond, but he steadily grew worse,
and, losing strength, returned to Pall Mall. Shortly after-
wards a gathering appeared in the neck, with accompany-
ing suppuration ; Hunter became gravely alarmed, and
the terrible word "cancer" was pronounced. " If this be
cancer," said Gainsborough to his sister, Mrs. Gibbon,
who had come from Bath to be near her suffering brother,
" I am a dead man."
Alas ! it was too true, and, knowing that the end was
at hand, Gainsborough made his will, and his peace with
God and man. As the summer advanced so did the
terrible malady, and in July it was only too apparent
that the close was near.
&+s>~^ *~
LETTER FROM GAIN
IN THE POSSESSION OF THE COUNCIL OF THE ROYAI
OUGH 1O REYNOLDS
:MY, BY \VHOSK KIND PERMISSION IT IS REPRODUCED
LONDON 105
There can have been but few people to whom Gains-
borough felt he must make reparation, or with whom he
had quarrels to settle, but there was one to whom he felt
he had not acted generously or fairly, and to him he
wrote that touching letter which is now kept as a precious
possession in the archives of Burlington House, where it
is placed near the portrait of the writer and not far from
that of its recipient, Sir Joshua Reynolds. It was my
good fortune to be the first to reproduce the text of
Gainsborough's last letter in my little life of Sir Joshua
Reynolds, by the kind permission of the Council of the
Royal Academy, and in this life of Gainsborough I have
been permitted the further privilege of being allowed to
give it in facsimile.
The letter bears no date; it was probably written in
the month of July, when the great artist felt the shadows
of death gathering around him. " Dear Sir Joshua,"
Gainsborough writes, " I am just to write what I fear you
will not read, after lying in a dying state for 6 months.
The extreme affection which I am informed of by a friend
which Sir Joshua has expressed induces me to beg a last
favour which is to come under my Roof, and look at
my things. My Woodman you never saw. What I ask
now is not disagreeable to your feeling, that I may have
the honour to speak to you. I can from a sincere Heart
say that I always admired and sincerely loved Sir Joshua
Reynolds. Tho : Gainsborough."
In referring to his farewell visit to the dying Gains-
borough, Reynolds said : " If any little jealousies had sub-
sisted between us, they were forgotten in those moments
of sincerity; and he turned towards me as one who was
engrossed by the same pursuits, and who deserved his
good opinion by being sensible of his excellencies." The
106 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
two great artists — the leaders of their profession — were
alone in that " back room on the second floor" of Schom-
berg House. What passed between them can only be
imagined, but one thing said by the dying painter as he
lay back in his bed with his hands clasped in those of
Sir Joshua, his former rival and now his still greater
friend, has come down to us, and will always remain in
our memory, "We are all going to Heaven, and Vandyke
is of the company."
On 2nd of August, 1788, Gainsborough passed away,
in his sixty-second year. By his particular desire he was
laid to rest in the churchyard at Kew, by the side of his
old friend of Ipswich days, Joshua Kirby.
The funeral took place on the 9th of August, the
painter's nephew and favourite pupil, Gainsborough Du-
pont, being chief mourner. The funeral pall was carried
by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir William Chambers, Benjamin
West, Francis Cotes, Bartolozzi, and Paul Sandby, all
Academicians; whilst amongst those who followed the
coffin were Sheridan, Linley the musical composer, Meyers
the miniature painter, and Kirby's son. In later years the
remains of the painter's widow and of Gainsborough
Dupont were laid beside him.
According to his wish, Gainsborough's gravestone was
unornamented, merely his name cut on the flat blue slab
which covered all that was mortal of one of England's
greatest painters. But the grave was allowed to fall into
decay until late in the last century, when that distin-
guished painter and Royal Academician, the late E. M.
Ward, had his resting-place restored and a memorial
tablet put up in the neighbouring church.
Perhaps it is as well in a country where sculpture has
never been understood, and rarely appreciated, that no
Gray ph 'to]
X-~
jt
[Dulwich Gallery
MRS. MOODEY AND HER CHILDREN
LONDON 107
statue of the great painter has been erected — his fame
will endure as long as any of his creations exist, without
aid from memorial stone or marble.
Gainsborough is one of England's glories ; not only as
Ruskin has described him as " an immortal painter," but
as one of the noblest of her children ; a man full of heart,
of generosity, of goodness, and genius ; happy in his life,
in his art and in his affection, and happy too, surely, in
the time of his death, for had he lived the mental affliction
which fell upon both his children would have embittered
and saddened his later years, and made the close of his
life full of sorrow.
Rarely has a painter been so successful both in land-
scape and in portrait painting, two of the most difficult
forms of the art, and one has to recall such giants as
Titian, Rembrandt and Rubens to find a parallel to this
double gift. In his dying interview with Reynolds the
great painter said, " that his regret at losing life was
principally the regret of leaving his art, and more espe-
cially as he now began to see what his deficiencies were,
which he said he flattered himself in his last works were
in some measure supplied."
Gainsborough gave us not only some of the finest
portraits of the most beautiful women and most famous
men of his day — Georgiana of Devonshire and Mrs.
Sheridan, William Pitt and James Wolfe among a score
of others — but matchless landscapes of what is most
beautiful and characteristic of our scenery, with its noble
old trees, its wonderful verdure, its radiant freshness, with
groups of English peasants as graceful and picturesque
as any painted by the greatest Italian or French artists.
He has, in fact, placed Nature before us, Nature at her
best.
CHAPTER VI
THE ILLUSTRATIONS
IN looking over the illustrations to this little life of
Thomas Gainsborough I think it will be found that
as complete a collection of the painter's life-work has
been brought together as was compatible with the form
and scope of the book. Views of the places most con-
nected with Gainsborough's life — from the modest little
house at Sudbury where he was born, to the almost
palatial wing of Schomberg House, in which he died,
have been photographed from the actual houses them-
selves, and in connection with the latest home of the
painter it has been my good fortune, through the kind
permission of the President and Council of the Royal
Academy, to be able to place before the readers of this
little book a facsimile of the letter which the dying
Gainsborough wrote at the close of his career to his old
rival, the first President of the Royal Academy, Sir
Joshua Reynolds. A more interesting letter than this
does not exist in all artistic literature. Through the
courtesy of the owners of some of Gainsborough's finest
works I have also been able to have reproductions made
of many paintings and sketches, hitherto unpublished,
whilst retaining the old favourites, such as the portraits
of The Blue Boy> and Mrs. Graham, of which one can
never weary, however often they are reproduced.
108
/. Caswull Smith photd\
{Collection of A. Sanderson, Esq,
MRS. FITZHERBERT
THE ILLUSTRATIONS 109
As the object of this series is to popularize the works
of the greater artists, it has been attempted, and I hope
with some success, to give as varied a collection of
Gainsborough's work as space permits, from the slightest
of his pencil or charcoal sketches, struck off as we have
seen as he sat by his wife's side and enjoyed his friends'
music and flung carelessly on the floor when finished,
to the life-size and masterly full-length portrait of some
great lady such as the Duchess of Devonshire, or of a hand-
some young Squire with his dog and his fowling-piece.
To one with no previous knowledge of Gainsborough's
work, I believe that a careful study of the paintings and
sketches reproduced in this volume will give a very just
idea of the nature of his excellences and talents, and
although they are mere shadows of the originals, since
they lack their marvellous colouring, some of the charm
and exquisite grace of the great artist is evident.
It is to be hoped that with the advance of colour
printing the day is not distant when even the very touch
of a master's hand, and all the hues of his palette will be
reproduced, in short that illustrations to art books will
be facsimiles of the originals.
Mrs. Siddons (p. 4). Mrs. Siddons was in her twenty-
ninth year when this splendid portrait of her was painted
by Gainsborough, the year after she had sat to Reynolds
as The Tragic Muse. It is said that one day when she
was sitting to him, Gainsborough, seized with a fit of im-
patience, exclaimed, " D it, Madam, there is no end
to your nose!" "Two years before the death of Mrs.
Siddons," writes Mrs. Jameson, " I remember seeing her
when seated near this picture, and looking from one to
the other ; it was like her still at the age of seventy."
Alexander , tenth Duke of Hamilton (p. 6), was born in
no THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
1767, and married in 1810 Susan Euphemia, youngest
daughter of William Beckford of Fonthill, by Lady Mar-
garet, daughter of Charles, fourth Earl of Aboyne. He
died in 1852.
Portrait of Gainsborough (p. 10). A clever sketch in
pencil of Gainsborough drawing ; but I have never been
able to discover the name of the sketcher of the portrait.
Portrait of the Artist (p. 12). As this portrait was
given by the artist to Thomas Coke he evidently himself
considered it a satisfactory likeness; but the unfinished
oil sketch, the frontispiece of this volume, is far more
pleasing and characteristic.
Gainsborough's Birthplace at Sudbury (p. 14). This view
is after the engraving by Finden in G. W. Fulcher's
" Life of Thomas Gainsborough," published by Long-
man in 1856. In comparing this little view with that
taken of the birthplace as it appears to-day, it will be
seen how completely the appearance of the front of the
house has been changed.
Garden Front of Gainsborough 's Birthplace (p. 16)
This view of Gainsborough's birthplace at Sudbury shows
the back, or garden side of the house, and is apparently
much in the same state as when Gainsborough lived
in it.
Jack Peartree (p. 16), after the original oil painting on
wood now in the Museum at Christ Church, Ipswich
There was no photograph from which I could have a
plate made of this early work of Gainsborough's, which
played so important a part in his early career, and I
consequently had to make a sketch from the original
for which I beg the kind reader's indulgence: it is in
tended only to convey an impression of the work.
The Old Grammar School, Sudbury (p. 1 8). The view
LORD LEICESTER
\Holkham Hall
Harrison photo]
[Collection of the Duke of Sutherland at Trent ham
GIRL AT A WINDOW
Bourke } hoto\ {.Collection of the Duke of Westminster, Eaton Hall
ROBERT, VISCOUNT BELGRAVE
THE ILLUSTRATIONS in
of Gainsborough's Grammar School, from which this illus-
tration is taken, was lent to me by the Rev. W. G. Nor-
man dale, the present master of Sudbury Grammar School ;
it appeared in a local magazine. This building was de-
stroyed towards the middle of the last century, a preten-
tious red-brick edifice now occupying its site.
Mrs. Gainsborough (p. 28). I have been unable to trace
any history of this portrait of the artist's wife.
Landscape with Sheep and Horses (p. 30). One of the
beautiful sketches, vivid in colouring and truth to nature,
belonging to Mr. Henry Piungst.
Henry Frederick, Duke of Cttmberland (p. 34). The
brother of George the Third, who married Anne Horton.
He was a man of loose life and narrow intellect. Con-
temporary history gives him few good qualities. Gains-
borough showed a courtier-like tact in making so present-
able a portrait. This study in oils forms a pendant to
that of the Duke's wife.
Queen Charlotte (p. 36). This illustration is taken
from one of the few fine mezzotints by Gainsborough
Dupont of his uncle's portraits. It was published in 1790.
The original is at Buckingham Palace, and is a tour de
force\ it gives a delightful character to the homely features
of Queen Charlotte. A sketch in oils of this portrait
was discovered at Homburg by the Duchess of Ser-
moneta.
Lord Archibald Hamilton (p. 38), was brother of the
tenth Duke of Hamilton, and was born in 1769. He was
member of Parliament for Lanarkshire, and died un-
married in 1827.
Gainsborough's House in Bath (p. 40), in which he spent
fifteen happy years. It forms one of the houses of the
famous Circus, and has recently been inscribed with a
ii2 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
memorial plaque recording that it was the dwelling-
place of the artist.
Great Cornard Wood (p. 42). This is taken from a very
rare engraving in mezzotint of the famous landscape by
Gainsborough in the National Gallery known as " Gains-
borough's Forest." It represents the wood near the
village of Cornard in Suffolk, and was one of the artist's
favourite landscapes.
David Garrick (p. 46), in the Town Hall at Stratford-
on-Avon. This is undoubtedly the finest portrait of the
many Gainsborough painted of his great friend. The
frame has been purposely reproduced as it is of great
artistic merit and rare beauty, and in every way worthy
of the splendid portrait it contains.
David Garrick (p. 46). This one of Gainsborough's
many portraits of Garrick cannot be compared with the
full-length at Stratford. The artist seems to have wished
to portray the great tragedian in one of his sterner
moods — probably in one of his parts ; but in a painting
one prefers Garrick's wonderfully mobile face with a less
stern and assumed expression.
General Wolfe (p. 48). The conqueror of Quebec was
painted at least twice by Gainsborough. In one the
painter placed a three-cornered hat on the hero's head.
This illustration gives us a more favourable impression
of Wolfe's countenance than any other of his portraits.
It was probably painted whilst Gainsborough was still at
Ipswich. Wolfe was very little in England after receiving
his commission, but he was on garrison duty from 1749
to 1758, and this interesting portrait was probably painted
between these dates.
Lord Frederick Campbell (p. 50). This is one of the
finest portraits by Gainsborough at Inverary Castle, where
^Collection of the Duke of Portland, K.G.
GRACE DALRYMPLE, MRS. ELLIOTT
Ha -ifstdngl photo\
{National Gallery
MUSIDORA BATHING HER FEET
o
fe
0 g
>H O
Q o
D o
H X
THE ILLUSTRATIONS 113
are also the full-length by him of the Duke of Argyll,
and of Field-Marshal Conway.
Landscape (p. 52). It is such a subject as this that
justifies the appellation of Gainsborough as " the father
of English landscape painting." His admirable land-
scapes inspired Constable, who, in turn, inspired the
French painters of the middle of last century; yet Gains-
borough has never been equalled in works of this type.
Landscape (p. 54). Whilst still the owner of this de-
lightful little landscape, I remember on showing it to
Mr. Gladstone, when he honoured my little house at
Windsor with a visit, how it roused his enthusiastic ad-
miration. I do not know to whom it now belongs.
Landscape (p. 56). This landscape is one of the least
happy from Gainsborough's brush, and is almost as savage
as one of Salvator Rosa's gloomy scenes, and with a
group of bandits among the rocks the illusion would be
complete.
The Harvest Waggon (p. 58). A very noble landscape
of the painter's, closely resembling the one belonging to
Mr. Lionel Phillips.
The Linley Sisters (p. 60). Eliza and Maria Linley,
daughters of Thomas Linley of Bath. Eliza married
Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Maria, who married a Mr.
Tickell, is the seated figure; she holds a music-book in
her hand and gazes somewhat vacantly before her. The
far more beautiful Eliza is also apparently lost in thought,
but her expression is one of rapt enjoyment. The Gains-
borough portraits of the Linley family came to the
Dulwich Gallery in 1831, on the death of the Rev. Ozias
T. Linley, who was a Fellow of the College.
Samuel Linley, R.N. (p. 60). The likeness of this
handsome youth to his beautiful sister (Mrs. Sheridan),
I
ii4 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
is very striking. Samuel Linley's end was mysterious;
he started on a voyage and never returned. There is a
tradition that this portrait was painted in forty-eight
minutes : it is at Dulwich College.
Mrs. Sheridan (p. 62). This is the most beautiful of all
Gainsborough's portraits of this lovely woman.
Georgiana Spencer •, afterwards Duchess of Devonshire
(p. 64). This is the earliest portrait painted by Gains-
borough of the famous Duchess. She was the eldest
daughter of John, first Earl Spencer. Born in 1757 she
married in 1774 William, fifth Duke of Devonshire, and
died in 1806. When this portrait was painted she was
six years old ; she wears a lace cap, and is dressed in a
white frock trimmed with cherry-coloured ribbons. This
delightful portrait belongs to Lord Spencer and is at
Althorp.
The Duchess of Devonshire (p. 66). This is the little
oil sketch of the celebrated portrait of the Duchess of
Devonshire, which disappeared so mysteriously from
Messrs. Agnews' sale rooms some quarter of a century ago.
Whether Gainsborough has here portrayed Georgiana or
Elizabeth Devonshire will probably never be ascertained.
For my own part I believe it to represent the latter lady,
for various reasons, and one that the face more closely
resembles other portraits of her than of Georgiana.
Georgiana, Duchess oj Devonshire (p. 66). One of
Gainsborough's full-length portraits of this beautiful lady.
This portrait was in the Exhibition of the Royal Aca-
demy in 1778, and was considered by Horace Walpole to
be " bad and washy." It was whilst painting this picture
that Gainsborough is said by Allan Cunningham to have
drawn his wet brush across the mouth, exclaiming, "Your
Grace is too hard for me! " I have never liked this por-
Graves f koto]
[Collection of F. Leyborne Popham, Esq.
MRS. LEYBORNE
[Collection of the Duke of Buccleuch at Dalkeith Palace
HENRY, THIRD DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH
Corke phc to]
[Collection of Earl Amherst at Montreal
WILLIAM PITT
Hyatt phc to]
[Original picture in collection oj Lord Rothschild
Sketch in collection of H. Pfungst, Esq
SKETCH OF THE PICTURE OF THE MORNING WALK
SQUIRE HALLETT AND HIS WIFE
THE ILLUSTRATIONS 115
trait of Duchess Georgiana, and it certainly gives little
impression of her beauty, charm, and fascination.
A Study (p. 68). A graceful study in black chalk,
belonging to Mr. Henry Pfungst.
Sketch (p. 68). This pretty study ot a garden scene
seems to have formed a portion of Gainsborough's St.
James's Park, as a similar figure is introduced into that
delightful work.
Study for a Portrait Group (p. 68). A delightful
study of three ladies who were supposed to represent
the three Princesses in the celebrated group at Bucking-
ham Palace.
Gainsborough's House in London (p. 70). The wing on
the right of Schomberg House was that occupied by Gains-
borough and his family, and through the door at which,
in the photograph, a policeman is standing, Sir Joshua
Reynolds passed when he called to visit the dying artist
in the month of July, 1783.
The Woodcutters (p. 72). A clever unfinished sketch
in oil over a ground of black chalk. This is one of the
artist's many experiments to obtain novel effects by the
use of different mediums.
The Hon. Mrs. Graham (p. 74). This lady was the
second daughter of Charles, ninth Lord Cathcart. She
was born in 1757, and married in 1774 Thomas Graham
of Balgowan, afterwards Lord Lynedoch, a distinguished
Peninsular general, who, born in 1748, lived until 1843.
Mrs. Graham died in 1792. This picture, as has already
been said, was bricked up by her husband after her
death, and was forgotten for a half century. When it
was discovered it was as fresh as on the day on which it
was painted. It was bequeathed to the National Portrait
n6 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
Gallery of Scotland by Mr. Robert Graham in 1859,
and it is one of the artist's noblest works.
The Housemaid (pp. 74, 76). A very interesting life-size
oil study of a beautiful young woman — the Hon. Mrs.
Graham — masquerading as a housemaid. The fifth Earl
of Carlisle, who was a great collector, is said to have seen
this painting in its unfinished state in Gainsborough's
studio, and begged him not to add another touch to it,
which proves Lord Carlisle to have possessed good taste,
as no further finish could add greater charm to this
delightful work.
Maria Walpole, Duchess of Gloucester (p. 76). Maria
Wai pole was the daughter of Sir Edward Wai pole, and
married first in 1759, James second Earl of Waldegrave,
and secondly in 1766, William Henry Duke of Gloucester,
brother of George the Third. By her second marriage
she had three children, the eldest of whom became the
second Duke of Gloucester; as her marriage took place
before the passing of the Royal Marriages Act it was
acknowledged by the King. The Duchess was a niece
of Horace Walpole, who refers frequently in his letters
to her beauty, and mentions an occasion when she and
Lady Coventry were mobbed one Sunday in the Park.
She sat frequently to Reynolds, and there is a superb
half-length of her by him at Newnham. She was the
mother by her first marriage of the three beautiful Ladies
Waldegrave, whom Reynolds has immortalized in his
famous group, formerly at Strawberry Hill. The Duchess
died in 1803, aged seventy.
Master Jonathan Buttall, " The Blue Boy" (p. 78). One
of Gainsborough's best and most popular portraits. Young
Buttall was a handsome lad, the son of a rich London
ironmonger, in whose -teps he followed. This portrait
Hanfstani i photo\
[National Gallery
ORPIN, PARISH CLERK OF BRADFORD, WILTS
[Collection of the Rev. E. Gardiner
GAINSBOROUGH'S NEPHEW
Gray photo}
[Collection of James Orrock, Esq.
MRS. FREER
[The Hall, Christ Church, Oxford
SIR JOHN SKINNER
(CHIEF' BARON)
THE ILLUSTRATIONS 117
is supposed to have been exhibited in the Academy of
1770. Reference is made in the text to the probable
reason for Gainsborough painting the youth in a blue
dress. The Blue Boy hangs in the same room at Grosvenor
House as Reynolds's Tragic Muse.
Anne Luttrell, Duchess of Cumberland (p. 80). The
eldest daughter of Simon, first Earl of Carhampton. She
married, first, Christopher Horton, and, secondly, Henry
Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, a brother of George the
Third. She died in 1803. Gainsborough painted the
Duchess on several occasions. This is a life-size sketch
in oils, and belongs to the Royal Collection at Windsor
Castle. It is interesting as showing the artist's method in
beginning his life-size portraits.
George, Prince of Wales (p. 82). This is the portrait
painted for Colonel St. Leger. It was formerly at Brockett
Hall, Lord Melbourne's.
George, Prince of Wales (p. 82). This portrait forms
one of the series painted by Gainsborough of George the
Third, his Queen, and all their children, with the excep-
tion of the Duke of York. When the Prince sat to
Gainsborough he was in the heyday of his youth, before
his fine features had become bloated from drink and
dissipation, and when he was still known as " Prince
Florizel."
George the Third (p. 82). This very excellent likeness
of " Farmer George " belongs to the series of portraits
of his family in the late Queen's Council Chamber at
Windsor Castle.
Charles Frederick Abel (p. 84). Born in Germany in
1725, Abel came to London in 1759, and became chamber
musician to Queen Charlotte. He was famous for his
playing upon the viol-di-gamba, and was one of Gains-
n8 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
borough's greatest musical friends. This fine portrait was
in the Academy in 1777, an<3 Horace Walpole thought it
" very like and well."
The Cottage Children (p. 86). This scene of rustic life
is taken from the mezzotint by Henry Birche, on the
plate of which is scratched " Gainsborough Pinx. The
Cottage Children." It was published in 1792 and the fate
of the original is unknown beyond the fact that it is no
longer in existence.
Girl and Pigs (p. 88). Gainsborough painted this
subject on two or three occasions. The best I know is
at Castle Howard, and formerly belonged to Sir Joshua
Reynolds. He also painted one for Lord Gainsborough
which perished in a fire. The mezzotint from which this
was taken is a rare one, and is the work of Dickinson.
There is also an engraving of this picture by Richard
Earlom, published in 1783.
The Woodcutter's Home (p. 90) is one of Gainsborough's
best landscapes, and is one of the great art treasures at
Belvoir Castle.
Colonel "Jack " St. Leger (p. 92). Gainsborough also
painted another full-length of this handsome young officer
standing by the side of his charger, which was given in
exchange for the full-length of the Prince of Wales, and
was formerly at Hampton Court Palace.
Drawing for a Transparency (p. 94). This is one of
Gainsborough's rare seascapes which he repeated on glass
for one of the slides in his camera. He made twelve
of these paintings on glass, 'which were movable and
lighted at the back by candles in the back of a box, which
he called his show-box. Gainsborough would show these
illuminated slides to his friends at Schomberg House.
" We were frequently," wrote one of his friends, " favoured
Hollyer f>hoto\
[Collection of Lord Ronald Sutherland Cower
AN IDYLL
THE ILLUSTRATIONS 119
with a peep at the little theatre of transparencies and
always with a new pleasure, for by varying the lamps a
great variety of effects could be rendered on the same
subject." Sir Joshua Reynolds is said to have admired
this artistic toy which is now (1903) to be seen quite
complete in the Stafford Gallery in Old Bond Street.
The Royal Princesses (p. 96). This is the group of the
three eldest daughters of George the Third, the hanging
of which in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy led to
Gainsborough's quarrel with that institution. The Prin-
cesses are the Princess Royal, Princess Augusta, and
Princess Elizabeth. This picture hangs at Buckingham
Palace in a room full of full-lengths of the other members
of the Royal Family by Gainsborough.
Mrs. Robinson as Perdita (p. 98). This is one of Gains-
borough's masterpieces. Poor Perdita Robinson looks as
sad as sorrow. She holds a miniature of her faithless
Prince Florizel in her hand. All the world seems to have
deserted her, but she has one faithful friend left, the
beautiful Pomeranian which sits on the bank beside his
mistress.
LordMendip (p. 100). This is a fine portrait, and looks
well amongst its surroundings of bishops and heads of
houses in the Great Hall of Christ Church, Oxford.
Wellbore Ellis, Lord Mendip, was a well-known Minister
of State. This portrait was at the Manchester Exhibition
in 1857. f
Mrs. Moodey and Children (p. 106). A charming group
of a mother and children, and the finest Gainsborough in
the gallery at Dulwich, to which it was presented by
Captain Moodey, but we do not know who Mrs. Moodey
was. The delightful children wear pink sashes over their
muslin dresses, and little red shoes. The landscape is
120 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
superb, the sky gray and cloudy, and tall wild plants in
the foreground.
Mrs. Fitzherbert (p. 108). Mrs. Fitzherbert was the
youngest daughter of Mr. Walter Smythe of Bambridge,
Hampshire, and was born in 1756. She first married
Edward Weld of Lulworth Castle, who died within a year,
and secondly Thomas Fitzherbert of Swinnerton, Stafford-
shire, who died in 1781. Later she was supposed to be
secretly married to George, Prince of Wales (in 1785);
she died at Brighton in 1837. She was a Roman Catholic
by religion. The latter part of her life was saddened by
the difficulty of her position, but she was universally
respected.
Girl at a Window (p. 1 10), from Trentham. I have no
knowledge when this work of Gainsborough's first came
to Trentham. It was probably one of the many pictures
acquired by my grandfather, the first Duke of Sutherland,
an ardent and catholic collector of pictures of all schools
and countries. The prevailing tone of this picture is
somewhat green, and so unlike Gainsborough is it in
colouring that were it not an undoubted work of his,
I should have guessed that it had been painted by
Cotes.
Robert Grosvenor, Viscount Belgrave (p. no). A de-
lightful portrait of an attractive-looking youth. Robert
Grosvenor was born in 1767, becoming Viscount Belgrave
in 1784. He succeeded his father as second Earl Gros-
venor in 1802, and died in 1845. It was his grandson,
Hugh Lupus, who became first Duke of Westminster in
1874. This portrait is at Eaton Hall.
Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester (p. no), at Holkham,
Norfolk. This fine full-length of Lord Leicester is one
of Gainsborough's most spirited portraits ; the youth and
Bourke photo] [Collection of the Duke of Westminster, Eaton Hall
HENRIETTA, COUNTESS GROSVENOR
Graves photo} {Collection of the Duke of Newcastle
ANNA, COUNTESS OF LINCOLN
Graves photo\
{.Collection of Earl Stanhope
PHILIP, FOURTH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
(THE ONLY PORTRAIT EVER SIGNED BY GAINSBOROUGH)
Graves photo}
[Collection of Lady Wantage
MARIA, LADY EARDLEY, AND HER DAUGHTER, AFTERWARDS
LADY SAYE AND SEALE
THE ILLUSTRATIONS 121
his dogs are full of life. Born in 1754, Thomas Coke
was famous throughout Norfolk as a keen sportsman,
an excellent landlord and a noted agriculturist. He sat
in the House of Commons between 1807 and 1832, and
was created Earl of Leicester of Holkham in 1837. He
died in 1842. Writing of this portrait, Lady Leicester
(to whose kindness and Lord Leicester's permission, I
owe the photograph from which this block was made)
says, " The dress Lord Leicester's father was painted in
has a somewhat historical interest, as he wore it when he
went to petition King George to consider the interests
of the American Colonies before the war. The mixture
of brown and buff in the costume is very effective."
Mrs. Grace Elliott, born Dalrymple (p. 1 1 2). Grace Dal-
ryinple was said to be related to the family of Stair.
Brought up in France, she married, when very young,
Dr. John Elliott, a man old enough to be her father.
She ultimately left him and led a very adventurous life
in Paris and London. She was in Paris during the worst
days of the Revolution, living under the protection of
Philippe Egalite, Due d'Orleans. She wrote a diary of
her experiences of that time, which was published in
1859 under the title of "Journal of my Life during the
French Revolution." It is of thrilling interest. This por-
trait is at Welbeck Abbey.
Musidora bathing her Feet (p. 1 1 2). Only one other
nude beside this is known to have been painted by
Gainsborough. This picture, for which Emma, Lady
Hamilton may have sat, illustrates the lines from Thom-
son's " Summer," beginning
" Thrice happy swain !
A lucky chance, that oft decides the fate
Of mighty monarchs, then decided thine."
122 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
Study of a Dog (p. 1 1 2). This is an admirable study in
coloured chalk of a little spaniel, and shows Gains-
borough's talent as a painter of dogs. Landseer himself
could not have given more life and character to the little
creature, which is watching what is going on out of the
corner of its eye, and seems ready to spring up at a
word.
The Morning Walk (p. 1 14). This is a masterful sketch
of Squire Hallett and his wife, in red chalk, a pre-
liminary study for the well-known portrait group which
belongs to Lord Rothschild. The portrait is a superb
painting, and one cannot help regretting that the actors
on this noble canvas are not of greater interest.
Mrs. Ley borne (p. 1 14). This lady's portrait is interest-
ing as an example of the early and somewhat stiff style
of Gainsborough's portrait painting.
William Pitt (p. 1 14). One of the six or seven portraits
painted by Gainsborough of " the pilot who weather'd
the storm," and one of the best. It is at Montreal, Lord
Amherst's house near Sevenoaks.
The Duke of Buccleuch (p, 114). A fine portrait of
Henry, third Duke of Buccleuch, who was born in 1746
and died in 1812. It was engraved by Dixon in 1771,
and again by Every in 1868, and was at the Grosvenor
Gallery Exhibition of Gainsborough's works in 1885.
Edward Orpin (p. 116), parish clerk of Bradford-on-
Avon. This is one of the finest of the Gainsboroughs in
our national collection. The original was one of the many
pictures bestowed by Gainsborough on Wiltshire, the
Bath carrier, who took his canvases to London. Ruskin,
in his " Modern Painters," has referred to Gainsborough's
" charm of pathetic tenderness and tinge of melancholy,"
which he noticed in many of his portraits, but there is
Han rstdHgl plwtd\ [Collection oj H.M. the King; Buckingham Palace
THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF CUMBERLAND
THE ILLUSTRATIONS 123
nothing but gladness in the beautiful old face of the
parish clerk.
Gainsborough's Nephew (p. 1 16). This portrait is sup-
posed to be that of the artist's nephew, Gainsborough
Dupont.
Mrs. Freer (p. 1 16). A charming portrait of a very in-
telligent-looking woman, which belongs to the well-known
collector Mr. James Orrock.
Sir John Skinner (p. 116). Gainsborough painted Sir
John twice; one of his portraits is in Lincoln's Inn. The
other, of which this is a reproduction, is in the Hall of
Christ Church, Oxford. Sir John Skinner was born in
1773, and became Chief Baron in 1777. He died in 1805.
Large Drawing in Coloured Chalks and Wash (p. 1 1 8).
This beautiful drawing in wash and coloured chalks
represents the wooded lane called after Gainsborough
near Ipswich. It is one of the most beautiful in Mr.
Arthur Kay's beautiful collection of studies by the
artist.
An Idyll '(p. 1 18). This appears to have been cut out of
a large landscape representing a wood with the ruins of
a church in the foreground. Two peasants are reading
the inscription on a tombstone. The large painting has
disappeared, but there exists a very rare mezzotint of it
by M. C. Prestal, inscribed to Sir Joshua Reynolds by
Robert Pollard, and dated 12 May, 1790. The first two
verses from Gray's Elegy are inscribed below the engrav-
ing. The small painting was found at Lillieshall Hall,
Salop.
Anne, Countess of Lincoln (p. 120). Anne Stanhope,
daughter of the second Earl of Harrington. She married
Thomas Fiennes-Pelham-Clinton, second son of Henry,
Duke of Newcastle and Earl of Lincoln.
124 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
Henrietta, Countess Grosvenor($. 120). There is a tradi-
tion that after the famous divorce case in which this lady
and the Duke of Cumberland were the principal actors,
the erring lady's husband cut the portrait in half — at
any rate this is all that remains at Eaton Hall, of Lady
Grosvenor's portrait by Gainsborough. Henrietta Vernon
married Lord Grosvenor in 1764, and after his death in
1802 married a General Porter. She died in 1828.
Lady Eardley and Daughter (p. 120). Until the year
1884, when the group was purchased by the late Lord
Wantage, it was at its original home, Broughton Castle,
Oxon. The mother is Lady Eardley, wife of Sampson,
Baron Eardley, and the little girl, her daughter Maria,
married William, eleventh Baron Saye and Sele in
1794. Lady Eardley wears a pink "sacque" gown, and
her dark brown hair is slightly powdered.
Lord Chesterfield (p. 120). The celebrated statesman
and author of " Letters to his Son." Philip Dormer
Stanhope was the son of Philip, third Earl of Chester-
field and Lady Elizabeth Savile, daughter of the Marquis
of Halifax. Born in 1694, he succeeded to the title in
1726. In 1745 he was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
He married Melusina de Schulenberg, a natural daughter
of George the First, and died in 1773. This was the last
portrait painted of him and is inscribed, "Aged 76, date
1769."
The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland (p. 122). This
charming picture, which is at Buckingham Palace, repre-
sents the Duke and Duchess walking in a garden ; the
lady on the right in the background is the Duchess's
sister who ended her life so miserably. Anne Luttrell
looks a head taller than her royal spouse, but although
this may be owing in a measure to her high heels and
{Collection, of Sir G. O. Trevelyan at Cambo
MISS SUKEY TREVELYAN
THE ILLUSTRATIONS 125
head-gear, she was a tall and stately dame, whilst the
Duke was small and insignificant in form and features.
Hen and Chickens (p. 122). A clever oil sketch of a
barn-door fowl with her brood, which is said to have
been painted in an hour.
Miss Sukey Trevelyan (p. 124), was the great-aunt
of Sir George Trevelyan. This portrait was painted in
1761 ; in 1764 Miss Trevelyan was married to Mr. Hud-
son, of Bassingly, Yorkshire. In a letter to me Sir George
Trevelyan says, " The face is as Gainsborough left it,
beautifully painted, and also the white and gold dress.
The neck is a daub, and the left hand ; and the hair and
curls are all painted over. The picture, I suppose, was
painted at Bath. I think Gainsborough's price was then
eight guineas. The seat of Sir George Trevelyan, the
girl's father, was Nettlecombe in Somersetshire. Sir George
died in 1768, and he likely enough left the picture to his
brother-in-law, Sir Walter Blackett, who had made his
son, Sir John, heir to Wallington." In a note to Ful-
cher's " Life of Gainsborough," the picture is thus de-
scribed. " The costume of this portrait has been altered.
Like Chaucer's * Wife of Bath,' Miss Trevelyan was
originally arrayed in a hat * as broad as is a buckler or a
targe.' Her ruffles also were of gigantic dimensions; the
picture was, indeed, styled by a humourist, 'A Portrait of
a hat and ruffles.' Sir Walter Blackett, its former pro-
prietor, had the dress painted out by Reynolds, who it is
said did not improve the picture by disrobing the lady
of her finery." Lady Trevelyan most kindly sent me a
sketch in pencil she had made of Miss Sukey's portrait
in which she has outlined the shape of the hat and
ruffles as they appeared under the fresh coat of paint
placed over them by Sir Joshua. This is certainly the
126 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
only portrait in existence painted by Gainsborough and
repainted by Reynolds.
Lady SJteffield (p. 126). Sophia Charlotte Digby was
the daughter of Dr. Wollin Digby, Dean of Durham, and
married in 1784 Sir John Sheffield, second baronet, of
Normanby. He died without children in 1815, his widow
survived him until 1835.
Four of our pictures come from the remarkable collec-
tion of the works of Gainsborough which Mr. Charles
Wertheimer has from time to time gathered together.
The chief one perhaps is the latest which he has acquired,
the superb portrait of a lady, which is, I should certainly
say, Mrs. Sheridan, in the heyday of her beauty, which
he bought at Christie's for the sensational sum of 9,000
guineas.
It is a lovely picture, and having had all the dirt and
dust which had accumulated upon it carefully removed,
it shines out with glorious light as one of the most ex-
quisite portraits of that always fascinating lady which
Gainsborough ever painted. I am favoured in being able
to present to the public this newly-discovered treasure;
a picture almost unrivalled in beauty. Other works from
the same collection are the portraits of Dorothea, Lady
Eden, wife of Sir John Eden, Bart, which was shown at
Burlington House in 1878 and in 1887; Nancy Parsons,
the famous demi-mondaine, a great beauty who lived
under the protection of the Duke of Grafton, and whose
portrait was unknown when Sir Walter Armstrong wrote
his book on Gainsborough ; and a charming portrait, also
newly discovered, which represents the two daughters of
the artist, Margaret and Mary, with sketching materials
before them. There is also to be found amongst the
illustrations a portrait of the Earl Fitzwilliam, which now
Thomsc >i photo}
{Collection of Miss Alice Rothschild
LADY SHEFFIELD
\_Fitzivilliam Library, Cambridge
EARL FITZWILLIAM
THE ILLUSTRATIONS 127
adorns the famous gallery which bears his name at Cam-
bridge, and a representation of the very rare mezzotint
called An Idyll, which gives the whole of a picture, a part
only of which remains to show its beauty. I am fortunate
in myself possessing the small piece of the larger picture
which gives the children at the grave, and also a fine im-
pression of this very rare mezzotint, which shows what
the whole work was before some wanton person cut
it up.
It will be apparent from the illustrations in this volume
that Gainsborough loved to paint landscapes as much,
if not more, than portraits. He may be said to have lived
by portrait painting, and to have painted landscapes for
his own personal pleasure. The sale of the latter was
extremely small during his lifetime, and we know that
hundreds of these delightful paintings were stacked away
on either side of the passages at Schomberg House and
were left unsold at his death.
Those who have visited his birthplace, Sudbury, and
Ipswich, where he lived for fourteen years, and where he
worked at landscape painting with greater freedom than
in the later years in Bath and London, will be able to
judge the truth of his transcripts of the surrounding
woods and valleys.
We can still observe his singular fidelity to nature
when in the wooded lane near Ipswich, called after the
painter's name, with its noble old oaks and distant
glimpses of the broad expanse of the Orwell, and although
we no longer find the beautiful groups of peasants which
the artist introduced into such paintings as The Harvest
Waggon and The Cottage Door, so unchanged are the
surroundings he immortalized that we should not be
surprised if such models suddenly appeared and gave
128 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
what alone is needed to complete the living realization of
one of his pictorial triumphs.
Gainsborough loved best to paint the woods and
pastures of his native Suffolk when they were flooded
with sunshine, and never cared to perpetuate the weird or
angry aspects of weather, save when he portrays a wood-
man caught in a storm, or a peasant lad taking shelter
from a deluge of rain. Like his own temperament, his
pictures from nature are all brightness and sunshine;
and he loved to catch the effect of a passing cloud, of the
wind blowing through the branches of some old elm or
oak; of the dappled shade on the bracken, and of the
setting sun casting its slanting rays over the fields and
woodlands, and throwing a silvery sheen on the distant
waters in the background.
INDEX
Abel, Charles Frederick, Portraits
of, 84, 85, 117.
Amherst, Lord, Portrait of, 99, 100.
Argyll, John Campbell, Duke of,
Portrait of, 51.
Astley, "Beau," 71.
Bail lie family, the, Portrait group,
94-
Barker, Thomas, 100.
Bath, Society in, 37 ; beauty of, 40.
Beaumont, Sir George, 103.
Belgrave, Robert Grosvenor, Vis-
count, Portrait of, 120.
Blus Boy, The, 5, 77-79, 108, 116.
Buccleuch, Duke of, Portrait of, 122.
Burke, Portrait of, 48.
Burr, Margaret, 23. See Mrs.
Gainsborough.
Burroughs, Rev. Humphrey, 19.
Buttall, Master. See The Blue Boy.
Canning, George, Portrait of, 6, 99.
Campbell, Lord Frederick, Portrait
of, 51, 112.
Charlotte, Queen, Portraits of, 81,
82, in.
Chesterfield, Lord, Portrait of, 124.
Constable, John, 7, II, 33.
Con way, Field-Marshal Seymour,
Portrait of, 51.
Cos way, Richard, 71-
Cottage Children, The, 118.
Cottage Door, The, 7, 89, 127.
Cottage Girl, The, 88.
Cumberland, Duchess of, Portraits
of, 80, 117.
Cumberland, Duke of, Portrait of,
81, in.
Cumberland, Duke and Duchess of,
Portrait group of, 4, 80, 1 24.
Cunningham, Allan, his " Lives of
the Painters," 10, n.
Devonshire, Georgiana, Duchess of,
study for Portrait of, 9 ; Portraits
of, 42, 65-67, 114.
Devonshire, Elizabeth, Duchess of,
the "Lost Duchess," a Portrait
of, 67, 114.
Dogs Fighting, 89, 90.
Dog, Study of a, 122.
Dupont, Gainsborough, 14, 15, 65,
100, in; Portrait of, 123.
Eardley, Lady, and daughter, Por-
trait group of, 124.
Eden, Dorothea, Lady, Portrait of,
126.
Edgar, Mr., 25; letter of Gains-
borough to, 29.
Elliott, Mrs. Grace, Portrait of, 121.
Fischer, J. C., Portrait of, 59, 84,
96 ; marries Gainsborough's
daughter, 91; death of, 92.
Fitzherbert, Mrs., Portrait of, 120.
Fitzwilliam, Earl, Portrait of, 126.
129
1 3o
INDEX
Foote, Portrait of, 47.
Forgeries of Gainsborough's works,
100, 1 02.
Freer, Mrs., Portrait of, 123.
Frost, William Edward, 101.
Fulcher, G. W., his " Life of Gains-
borough," 10, II.
Fuseli, Henry, criticism of Gains-
borough by, 85.
Gainsborough, Thomas, compared
with Reynolds, 1-3; his admira-
tion for Vandyck, 3; compared
with Rembrandt, 3 ; and Watteau,
4; as a colourist, 5 ; distinction of
his portraits, 5-6; portraits of
himself i 6, 28, no; his land-
scapes, 6 ; his sketches, 8 ; his de-
fects, 9; his birth and family, 12;
account of his brothers and sisters,
13, 14; his birthplace, 15, 16, 18;
at school, 19, 20; sent to London,
20; life in London, 21; his mar-
riage, 24; removes to Ipswich,
24; portraits painted at Ipswich,
27, 28; letter to Mr. Edgar, 29;
Hingeston's description of, 32 ; his
daughters, 33 ; his love of music,
33 ; his acquaintance with Thick -
nesse, 34; goes to Bath, 36; his
success, 40; copies of Vandyck
by, 45 ; portraits painted at Bath,
41, et seq.; contemplated imagin-
ary picture of Shakespeare, 49;
his passion for musical instru-
ments, 54-565 account of his quar-
rel with Thicknesse, 57-60; Por-
traits of Miss Linley, 61-63; wax
busts modelled by, 63, 64; his
method of painting portraits, 65,
86; return to London, 69; his
relations with Reynolds, 79 ; por-
traits of the Royal Family by, 80-
82 ; little known of his home life,
82, 86, 87; landscapes and pictures
of children by, 87-90 ; visit to the
Lakes, 94 ; transparencies on glass
by> 95) IJ8; visit to Sudbury, 96;
his quarrel with the Royal Acad-
emy, 96, 97; his imitators, 100-
102; his sketches and studies,
102; his last illness, 104; letter
to Reynolds, 105 ; his death, 106.
Gainsborough's Daughters, Portraits
of, 33, 126.
Gainsborough, John, father of the
painter, 12, 18, 19.
Gainsborough, Humphrey, brother
of the painter, 13, 14, 82.
Gainsborough, Mrs., 24; Portraits
of, 28, in; visit of, to Suffolk,
S3-
Gainsborough, Mary, 33; marries
Fischer, 91; becomes insane, 92.
Garrick, Portraits of, 46, 53, 84,
112.
George III., 80, 81; Portrait of, 82,
117; Portrait of the daughters of,
96, 119.
George, Prince of Wales, Portraits
of, 93, 117.
Girl at a Window, 120.
Girl with Pigs, 88, 118.
Gloucester, Maria, Duchess of, Por-
trait of, 1 1 6.
Graham, Dr., 73.
Graham, Mrs., Portraits of, 5, 6, 75-
77, 108, 115; as The Housemaid,
75. n6.
Gravelot, 20.
Great Cornard Wood, 43, 112.
Green, Mary, 101.
Grosvenor, Henrietta, Countess, Por-
trait of, 50, 124.
INDEX
Grosvenor, Robert, Lord Belgrave,
Portrait of, 120.
Hallett, Squire, and his wife, Por-
trait group of, 122.
Hamilton, Colonel, story of Gains-
borough and, 87.
Hamilton, Lady, 73-75, 121.
Hamilton, Alexander, Duke of,
Portrait of, 6, 109.
Hamilton, Lord Archibald, Portrait
of, in.
Hart, Emma. See Hamilton, Lady.
Harvest Waggon, The, 52, 113.
Hayman, 20, 21, 43.
Henderson, letters from Gains-
borough to, quoted, 21, 47; Por-
trait of, 47.
Hervey, Captain Augustus, Portrait
of, 51.
Hill, Jack, 90.
Hingeston, Rev. James and family,
Portrait group of, 27, 28.
Hingeston, Mrs., Portraits of, 28.
Hingeston, John, 28; letter from,
quoted, 32.
Hogarth, 21, 22.
Honywood, General, Portrait of, 48.
Hoppner, John, his landscapes often
ascribed to Gainsborough, 101.
Housemaid, The, 75, 116.
Idy:i, An, 123.
Imiiators of Gainsborough, 100-102.
Inhrior of a Cottage, 89.
Jackson, William, account of Gains-
borough's passion for musical in-
struments, 54-56.
Jackson, William (of Exeter), 101.
Johnson, Dr., supposed Portrait by
Gainsborough of, 98; Opie's Por-
trait of, 99.
Kemp, Mr., of Sudbury, 16, 18.
Kirby, Joshua, 25, 26, 101.
Kirby, William, 26.
Kirby, Sara (afterwards Mrs. Trim-
mer), 26.
Landguard Fort, View of, 35 ; en-
graved by Major, 35.
Landscapes, Gainsborough's, 6-8,
52, 53,88,89, 113, 127, 128.
Landscape "with Figures, 53.
Leicester, Thomas Coke, Earl of,
Portrait of, 42, 120.
Leyborne, Mrs., Portrait of, 122.
Ligonier, Lord, Portrait of, 54.
Lincoln, Anne, Countess of, Portrait
of, 123.
Linley, Elizabeth, 60; married
Sheridan, 61. See Sheridan, Mrs.
Linley, Maria. See Tickell, Mrs.
Linley, Samuel, R.N., Portrait, 113.
Little Cottagers, The, 89.
" Lost Duchess," The, 67.
Loutherbourg, Philippe de, 95.
Luttrell, Anne. See Cumberland,
Duchess of.
Luttrell, Elizabeth, 80.
Medlicott, Portrait of, 43.
Mendip, Lord, Portrait of, 119.
Molyneux, Isabella, Lady, Portrait
. of, 53.
Moodey, Mrs., and Children, Por-
trait group of, 119.
Morning Walk, The, 122.
Musidora Bathing her Feet, 121.
Normandale, Rev. W. G., 19, in.
Nugent, Robert Craggs (afterwards
Earl), Portrait of, 41.
Nuthall, Portrait of, 54.
132 INDEX
Orpin, Portrait of, 52, 122.
Parsons, Nancy, Portrait of, 126.
Peartree, Jack, Portrait of, 16, 17,
25, 1 10.
Pink Boy, The, 79.
Pitt, William, Portrait of, 122.
Poyntz, William, Portrait of, 41.
Quin, Portraits of, 43, 44; Hay-
man and, 43.
Rembrandt, 3, 8.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, compared with
Gainsborough, 1-3; his descrip:
tion of Gainsborough's " model
landscape, "64; his dictum on the
use of warm and cold colours, 77,
78 ; relations with Gainsborough,
79 ; Gainsborough's letter to, 105 ;
last interview with Gainsborough,
105, 1 06; portrait by Gainsbo-
rough repainted by, 125.
Richardson, Portrait of, 48.
Rivers, Lord, Portrait of, 53.
Robinson, Mrs., Portrait of, as
" Perdita," 98, 119.
Romantic Landscape with Sheep at a
Fountain, 53.
Royal Academy, Gainsborough and
the, 41, 45, 53, 96, 97; Letter
from Gainsborough to Reynolds
in the possession of, 105, 108.
Royal Princesses, Portrait group of,
97,98, 119.
Ruskin on Gainsborough, 9, 122;
his description of a landscape
painter's life, 30, 31 ; his criticism
on the Baillie family group, 94.
St. James's Park, 4, 28, 115.
St. Leger, Colonel, Portrait of, 93, 1 18.
Schomberg House, 69.
Schomberg,Dr.Ralph,Portraitof,94.
Sheffield, Lady, Portrait of, 126.
Shepherd's Boy in the Storm, The, 89.
Sheridan, R. B., Portrait of, 48;
married Miss Linley, 61, 63 ;
story of Gainsborough and, 103.
Sheridan, Mrs., Portraits of, 5, 6,
61-63, 114; Portrait group of, with
her sister, 62, 113; death of, 64;
newly discovered portrait of, 126.
Siddons, Mrs., Portraits of, 5, 6, 78,
98, 109.
Skinner, Sir John, Portrait of, 123.
Smith, John Thomas, 11.
Spencer, Georgiana, Countess, Por-
trait of, 42.
Sterne, Portrait of, 48.
Sudbury, Gainsborough's birth-
place, 10 et seq.
Sussex, Lady, and her Daughters,
Portraits of, 54.
Thicknesse, Philip, his Life of
Gainsborough, 10, 1 1 ; first meet-
ing with Gainsborough, 34, 35 ;
account of, 34; induces Gains-
borough to go to Bath, 36; his
portrait, 39 ; account of his quarrel
with Gainsborough, 57, 60.
Thicknesse, Mrs., account of, 57n.;
Portrait of, 57.
Tickell, Mrs., 62, 113.
Transparencies, by Gainsborough,
95, 118.
Trevelyan, Sir George, 125.
Trevelyan, Miss Sukey, Portrait of,
125.
Trimmer, Sara, 26.
Vandyck, copies of, by Gains-
borough, 45.
Vernon, Admiral, Portrait of, 35.
INDEX
Walpole, Horace, 43, 52, 84, 85,
114, 116.
Watering Place, 7^he, 7, 43.
Watteau, Gainsborough compared
with, 4.
Wertheimer, Mr. Charles, 126.
Wilson, Richard, 6.
Wiltshire, the carrier, 52.
Wolfe, General, Portraits of, 49, 112.
Woodcutter's Home, The, 118.
| Woodcutters, The, 115.
! Woodman, The, 88, 89.
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